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The Tragedy of Bitlis 



By 
GRACE H. KNAPP 



Being Mainly the Narratives of 
GRisELL M. McLaren 

AND 

MYRTLE O. SHANE 



ILLUSTRATED 




New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1919, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY / 






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New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 



©CU535r)18 



To the memory of those dear to me. 

Father, Mother, Brother, **Aunt Charlotte and 
Aunt Mary " Ely, who, in the name of Christ, 
spent their lives for the Armenians of Bitlis, 
this story of the sufferings ayid heroism of the 
people whom they loved and worked for is 
affectionately dedicated 



Preface 

AFTER their return to this country in 
October, 1917, Miss McLaren and Miss 
Shane each wrote an account of what 
occurred in BitUs during the summer and early- 
autumn of 1915. A harmony of the two nar- 
ratives constitutes two-thirds of the present vol- 
ume, entire paragraphs or pages being quoted 
word for word where this was feasible. Every 
incident is absolutely authentic, for the two 
American ladies have related without exaggera- 
tion what they have seen with their own eyes 
or experienced in their own persons. 

I happened to be in Van when the war began 
and shared the fortunes of the Americans and 
Armenians there during the events briefly 
sketched in the chapter entitled " The Besieged 
City." But Bitlis was my birthplace and child- 
hood's home, and I had taught there for nine 
years. So the scenes I have described are dear 
and famihar scenes and the " Ely residence," 

5 



6 PEEFACE 

now looted, deserted and bare, my old home, 
once filled with relics of my parents' long life 
within its walls and endeared by a thousand ties 
of association. Pastor Khachig, Deegeen Lu- 
centag, Deegeen Heghene, and Kevork Effendi 
were old and valued friends, together with many 
others whose names are not mentioned in these 
pages, and Miss Shane's pupils had once been 
mine. One of them a few weeks ago related to 
me the sequel of Miss McLaren's and Miss 
Shane's narrative and the story of her own 
strange romance. 

The last chapter also describes the present 
condition in the Russian Caucasus of the refu- 
gees from the Van and Bitlis provinces and the 
wonderful work of relief and rehabilitation un- 
dertaken by the American Committee for Ar- 
menian and Syrian Relief. 

Grace H. Knapp. 



Contents 



I. 


BiTLIS 


9 


II. 


The Besieged City . . . . 


15 


III. 


An American Woman in a Turkish 
Hospital 


21 


IV. 


During the Siege . . . . 


29 


V. 


Across the Lake to Bitlis 


35 


VI. 


Twelve Thousand Refugees in 
Bitlis 


44 


VII. 


Massacre of the Men 


49 


VIII. 


Deportation of the Women . 


59 


IX. 


The Russian Army Approaches 


69 


X. 


The Passing of Miss Charlotte Ely 


74 


XI. 


After the Russian Retreat . 


82 


XII. 


Sister Martha . . . . 


93 


XIII. 


The Pioneer Parents of George 
Perkins Knapp . . . . 


96 


XIV. 


Greater Love Hath No Man . 


112 


XV. 


Miss McLaren Falls III ; German 
Officers Visit Bitlis . 


127 


XVI. 


MusTiFA Bey and the Schoolgirls 


133 


XVII. 


Miss McLaren and Miss Shane 
Obliged to Leave Bitlis 


140 


XVIII. 


Sequels 


144 



Illustrations 



Sister Cities With Interwoven Destinies 
A nook in Bitlis 
Van — from the citadel 



Charlotte E. Ely , , • 

Mary A. C. Ely . . • , 

Alzina Churchill Knapp 

George Perkins Knapp . 

Home Life in an Armenian Village 

Life in an ArxMEnian Refugee Camp — Port Said 



Industrial Relief of the American Committee for 
Relief in the Near East .... 
Shoe-making 
Lace-work 



Frontispiece 

FACING page 
74 



74 
74 
74 

I02 
I02 

148 



1 

BITLIS 

SPRING in a little Armenian town in the 
heart of Kurdistan : hills, bleakly bare 
and brown the rest of the year, were 
faintly green with a sparse evanescent herbage ; 
poplars lining streets and waterways were spires 
of pale green smoke bursting into beryl flame 
where the sun shot through; fruit trees behind 
high garden walls were masses of white bloom. 
Everywhere there was the sound and scent of 
running water, for the city was a city of streams 
and waterfalls and fountains, a city high, high 
up among the mountains, so enfolded within its 
hills, so swallowed up in deep narrow ravines 
that the whole of it could not be seen at once 
from the top of any of the surrounding peaks. 

The most densely built part was like an 
amphitheater, flat-roofed stone houses climbing 
tier above tier half-way up one face of Water 
Tower Hill, a hill as triangular and steep as a 
pyramid and crowned by an old tower whose 
surmised purpose had given it its name. 

9 



10 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

In the center of the amphitheater was an 
enormous ancient fortress, picturesque with 
towers and battlements, rising cHff-like above a 
hive of low-roofed bazaars. Around its base 
and under half a score of arched stone bridges, 
rushed a mountain torrent that had entered the 
city by one narrow gorge and left it by another, 
the western side of which was covered with the 
orchards and gardens of squatter Kurds. A 
smaller stream leaped down a crevice in the hills 
to meet it here, turning perforce on its way 
primitive grindstones in a mill that looked like 
a feudal baron's stronghold atop its pinnacle of 
peninsulated rock. 

The eastern side was a high bluff into the face 
of which was cut a highway leading from the 
center of the city to the south. The top of the 
bluff was a small plateau; near its northern edge 
the buildings of the American Mission looked 
down sheer two hundred feet into the well of 
the amphitheater with its mosques and mina- 
rets, fortress and bazaars. 

The Merchant in Persia, visiting Bitlis early 
in the sixteenth century, found this fortress or 
castle occupied by a Kurdish prince owning only 
nominal allegiance to the Shah of Persia. 



BITLIS 11 

Tavernier a century later was impressed by 
the power of the Bey of Bitlis, " who acknowl- 
edged neither the Shah of Persia nor the Sultan 
of Turkey and was courted by both on account 
of the strategical value of his city barring the 
communications between Aleppo and Tabriz, 
He also resided in the castle approached by 
three successive drawbridges and could place 
in the field 20,000 to 25,000 horsemen besides a 
quantity of good infantry. In the eighteenth 
century the Padre Maurizio Garzoni speaks of 
the dynasty of Bitlis as one of the five consider- 
able principalities which divided between them 
the Kurdistan of his day. The last of this old 
order of princes at Bitlis was a man of many- 
sided and remarkable character, whose romantic 
history one peruses with breathless excitement 
in the dry reports and correspondence of Consul 
Brant, the eye and ear of the famous Stratford 
Canning. After a life of chequered fortune and 
fox-like resistance to the Turkish power he was 
finally overwhelmed by the operations of Reshid 
Pasha and taken a prisoner to Constantinople 
in 1849/' ' 

This prince, Sherif Bey, built a fortified castle 
*H. F. B. I,ynch, "Armenia," Vol. II, Chap. VI. 



12 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

long ago razed to the ground, on an emi- 
nence, still bearing his name, which links the 
small plateau to Water Tower Hill. 

Once since the rule of Turkish pashas began 
have the Kurds of the region attempted to re- 
gain their old power. In the spring of 1914 they 
marched into the city, a harlequin mob in their 
gay native costumes, and armed chiefly with 
short swords, scimitars and knives. Chanting 
weirdly, they took up a position on Sherif Bey's 
Hill in full view of the government buildings 
and within direct range of fire from the bar- 
racks. They did not fear the enemy's bullets, 
for these would be warded ofif by the magic 
power of their religious leaders, the sheikhs. 

The machine guns startled them and they 
scurried to cover in an old Armenian church, 
from which for a while they returned the fire 
with a few old muskets. But when cannon-balls 
began to demolish the walls of their shelter and 
it was discovered that the invulnerable sheikhs 
had deserted them and were in hiding they fled 
in utter rout. 

More than a year had passed since then and 
Turkey had for months been at war with Russia, 
but the little town was quiet and peaceful this 



BITLIS 13 

bright May morning. Why not? It had known 
such terrible massacres during the past quarter 
century that a war with a foe from without, a 
war in which the Armenians themselves were 
fighting and proving their bravery and loyalty, 
seemed by comparison a thing not to be so 
greatly feared. And the governor of the prov- 
ince had thus far proved himself able to keep in 
order the turbulent elements within his vilayet. 
So there seemed no good reason why three of 
the small circle of American missionaries should 
not now take their furloughs which were due 
and for which a more convenient season might 
never occur. Mr. and Mrs. H. A. Maynard had 
worked for seven years in Bitlis, seven strenu- 
ous years filled with difficult problems, anxie- 
ties, sorrows, which only calm good judgment, 
devotedness and courage such as theirs could 
face and endure; they greatly needed now a 
year at home. With them was leaving Miss 
Mary D. Uline, who had begun her missionary 
life in Erzerum but who had taught for four 
years in the Mt. Holyoke Seminary of Bitlis and 
had been its principal for two years. 

It was the Armenian Ascension Day, and the 
streets were filled with people in gala attire. 



14 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

Hundreds of Armenian friends " set the travel- 
lers on the road," according to their custom. 
After these turned back, Miss Ely, Miss Shane, 
Mr. Knapp and the Armenian pastor and head 
teacher of the boys' school prepared a farewell 
picnic lunch in a shaded spot by the side of the 
road within sight and sound of the river. With 
hopeful prophecies concerning the future, with 
laughter and with jest, the members of the little 
group tried to hide from each other the doubts, 
misgivings and sense of loss with which the 
approaching separation filled their hearts. 

Yet they did not dream that at this very mo- 
ment their American friends of the nearest sis- 
ter mission, ninety miles away across Lake Van, 
were in a besieged city, cut off utterly from 
communication with the outside world; a be- 
sieged city that had held out gallantly against 
desperate odds for nearly four weeks but had 
now lost all hope and was fighting grimly but 
to put off a little longer the inevitable end. 



II 

THE BESIEGED CITY 

DJEVDET BEY, the Governor-General 
of Van, brother-in-law of Enver Pasha, 
Minister of War, had planned for April 
19, 1915, a general massacre of his Armenian 
subjects. On that day soldiers and Kurds, in 
some instances taking cannon with them, at- 
tacked the smaller towns and the villages of the 
province, and met with little or no resistance 
because most of the able-bodied men had been 
drafted into the Sultan's army and those who 
were left had very little ammunition. Fifty-five 
thousand men, women and children were 
slaughtered; thousands, wounded, managed to 
escape and flee to the capital, while their homes 
were looted and burned behind them. 

In the city of Van itself Djevdet Bey's plans 
met with an unexpected check. He had endeav- 
oured by exorbitant demands and by acts of 
treachery to incite the Armenians to " rebel- 
's 



16 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

lion " which would justify putting them to 
death. But the Armenians were exceedingly 
careful not to precipitate trouble by any overt 
act of their own, which, they very well knew, 
would be made an excuse for massacres all over 
the Empire. At the same time they determined 
to put up a light in case of attack, and they dis- 
covered that lines of entrenchment were being 
secretly drawn around the Armenian quarter. 

This Armenian quarter was about a mile 
square and was separated by a Turkish quarter 
from the business section in the old walled city 
two miles distant. In the walled city was the 
famous Castle Rock, a citadel that could pro- 
tect — or threaten — the bazaars and dwellings 
huddled around its base. 

Most of the Armenian men had enlisted or 
had been drafted into the army. Between 
twelve and fifteen hundred young men were left, 
trained riflemen, though they possessed but 
three hundred rifles among them. They manned 
and barricaded, secretly, positions all around the 
Armenian quarter, then — waited. " If the Ar- 
menians fire one shot," Djevdet Bey had told 
the Americans, " I will destroy the city utterly, 
leaving not one child as high as my knee." 



THE BESIEGED CITY 17 

The Armenians did not fire that first shot. 
Turkish soldiers fired it, and within an hour the 
Armenian quarter, with its thirty thousand in- 
habitants, was in a state of siege. 

At the same time the Armenians in the walled 
city were put on the defensive. Cannon on Cas- 
tle Rock were fired down upon their sun-dried 
brick houses, wrecking the upper stories. Al- 
though there were only thirty fighting men here 
they held out bravely to the very end. 

The story of the siege of Van, together with 
the events that preceded and followed, is fully 
told in Dr. C. D. Ussher's " An American Physi- 
cian in Turkey." ' It is very briefly related here 
on account of Miss Grisell McLaren's connec- 
tion with the tragedy of Van and the tragedy of 
Bitlis. 

When Turkey entered the war in the autumn 
of 1914, a military hospital was opened on the 
outskirts of the city about a mile from the 
American premises. The Governor asked the 
missionaries to send one of their number to help 
in this hospital, and Miss McLaren was chosen. 

Not far from the American premises was an 

"Ambassador Morgenthau also devotes considerable 
space to it in his book. 



18 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

Armenian orphanage under the management of 
a Swiss gentleman, Herr Sporri, his wife and 
daughter, and three German ladies. Hundreds 
of the orphans of the 1895-96 massacres had 
been taken care of for some years by the Ameri- 
can missionaries. Later these Germans had 
come in, and it had been thought best in order 
not to duplicate and waste effort to turn over all 
of the remaining orphans to their care. Frau- 
lein Kleiss (Schwester Marthe, or Sister Martha 
as we called her), was also asked to help and 
consented to do so. The two ladies worked 
during the day at the hospital, returning at 
night. Some of their pre-siege experiences are 
related by Miss McLaren in the following 
chapter. 

Although the Americans did not know that 
Djevdet Bey was planning a massacre, it was 
quite evident on April lYth that there was going 
to be serious trouble of some sort, so when he 
asked Sister Martha and Miss McLaren to stay 
at the hospital night and day for ten days, they 
understood there was to be no going and com- 
ing and they must either accede to his request 
or stay at home for that length of time. The 
Armenian workers begged them not to leave* 



THE BESIEGED CITY 19 

their presence might save these men from death. 
The thought of the way in which the poor pa- 
tients would be neglected during their absence 
also strongly influenced them and they decided 
to remain at their post. But throughout the 
siege they held no communication with their as- 
sociates nor did the Vali vouchsafe any informa- 
tion to the Americans concerning Miss McLar- 
en's well-being, although during the early part 
of the siege there was occasional communication 
between him and their official representative, 
the Italian consular agent. 

Djevdet Bey, indeed, in spite of the fact that 
hitherto he had had most friendly relations with 
the missionaries, in spite of the fact that scores 
of Turkish soldiers had been cared for in their 
Red Cross hospital and that he was assured they 
were maintaining an attitude of strict neutral- 
ity — which as Americans they were bound to do 
— was enraged by their humanitarian efforts in 
behalf of the non-combatants. They housed six 
thousand refugees on their own premises, or- 
ganized a city government and a system of food 
distribution, and cared for the sick and wounded. 
Epidemics raged, for over ten thousand villagers 
escaped to the city, provisions ran very low, and 



20 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

crowding, exposure and privation brought the 
usual consequences in their train. Djevdet Bey- 
threatened to bombard the American premises 
and he fulfilled his threat on the twenty-fourth 
and twenty-fifth days of the siege. Shells 
entered every building in the compound. 

This proved to be a burst of foiled spite, how- 
ever, for in the afternoon and evening of the 
15th of May the Turkish troops were with- 
drawn from the city and it was soon discovered 
that practically its entire Turkish population 
had already fled in boats across the lake to 
Bitlis. 

The Americans hastened the next morning to 
the military hospital only to find that Miss 
McLaren and Sister Martha had been sent with 
their patients to Bitlis four days earlier. 

On the 18th the Russians, whose approach 
had put to flight the Turks, entered the city. 



Ill 

AN AMERICAN WOMAN IN A TURKISH 
HOSPITAL 

{Miss McLaren^ s Story) 

**^TI ^HE Van hospital was used to serve the 
I portion of the Ottoman army that 
was fighting against the Russians be- 
tween Van and the Persian border. Of those 
who reached the hospital many were wounded, 
many had feet or hands frozen by lying day and 
night in the snow and many others were ill from 
exposure and improper food and shelter. There 
was no well-organized Red Cross or Red Cres- 
cent ambulance service — in fact, there were 
scarcely any roads over which four-wheeled 
vehicles could have travelled even if there had 
been any such vehicles available. The patients 
were cared for first in the field hospitals, which 
were usually in dark, dirty stables, and from 
these a few at a time were sent to the central 
hospital at Van. They had to come on the 
backs of donkeys, horses, or even oxen. Any 
who were unable to sit up and hold on were 

21 



22 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

bound, face down, on the back of the animal. 
Often when they arrived some poor fellows 
would be hanging over the side head down, 
sometimes with their heads between the ani- 
mal's front feet. No nurses were ever sent with 
such a caravan, and the muleteers did not care 
what happened. Such a journey required from 
four to ten days, and stops were made each 
night in a village, where the men had to lie with- 
out beds on some earthen floor. Lucky they 
were if they had a roof over their heads. 

" Where the roads were good ox-carts were 
used, but only for the worst cases, and the poor 
men had to lie for days on these, clad only in 
miserable rags, sometimes with a little hay 
under them and an overcoat for covering, some- 
times with nothing as protection, either below 
or above. On arrival the dead had to be re- 
moved first before the living could be gotten at, 
and more of these ox-cart passengers w^ere sent 
to the morgue than to the hospital. Few of 
those who were living when they arrived re- 
covered. 

" At first we wondered why we received so 
few heavily wounded men, but our wondering 
soon ceased when we heard the patients tell of 



IN A TUEKISH HOSPITAL 23 

how their companions were left dead or dying 
by the roadside. Enver Pasha is credited with 
having said that Turkish soldiers had no identi- 
fication cards or discs at the beginning of the 
war because the dead Turk is of no use to the 
Turkish Government. The severely wounded 
soldier was often left to die uncared for on the 
battle-field or by the roadside, probably because 
he could be of no further use to the government 
and surgical supplies were too precious to waste 
on such. 

" During the early weeks of the war our pa- 
tients were anxious to be made * tabourdji ' 
(discharged and returned to the front). They 
were all eagerness to fight to help their allies, 
the Germans. One young officer said, * No mat- 
ter what we sacrifice, it will still be little when 
we think of what we owe to Germany.' A few 
weeks later a companion, who had heard this 
remark, was in the operating room watching as 
the surgeon amputated the foot of a poor fellow 
who had already lost one leg and would lose a 
hand also. He said, 'May the curse of God 
rest upon the man who began this war, whether 
he is in London or Berlin or wherever he is.* 
We soon found that men were removing their 



24 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

bandages, and doing things to get their wounds 
infected and thus delay their departure from 
the hospital. The spirit of loyalty to their allies 
had changed, except in a few cases, to bitter 
hate, and more than one German officer has said 
to me, ' If the war goes against Germany the 
Turks will rise up and kill every German in the 
Turkish Empire.' 

" The hospital was a large, new building, with 
comfortable accommodations for 200 patients. 
The beds were of iron, each provided with one 
mattress of straw and one of cotton, which soon 
grew lumpy and hard as brick. Sheets were too 
narrow and short to protect the mattresses; pil- 
lows were used for months at a time without 
cleansing; there was not enough clothing to 
keep the patients clean and no bathing facilities 
— men were put to bed in the condition in which 
they came off the road; they were covered with 
vermin and the work in the laundry was so 
poorly done it was not safe to handle the gar- 
ments that had been washed. 

" Sister Martha and I made up our minds 
that there must be some radical changes in the 
management of affairs or we could not work. 
A hospital committee was formed of prominent 



IN A TUEKISH HOSPITAL 25 

Turks and foreigners. For a few days members 
of this committee haunted the place, holding 
conferences with the staff, finding out what was 
needed and promising to have everything com- 
plete in a very short time. Two members were 
to spend several hours each day going about the 
wards, watching the dressing of wounds and 
attending operations. They began bravely, but 
it was really funny to see how quickly they 
sought the open air after a visit to a ward. 
They * did not like the smell,' they said, and 
left. The life of this committee of high ideals 
was painfully short, but before it went out we 
were given an adequate supply of the most nec- 
essary things, and a small room was fitted up 
for bathing, each patient being allowed one pail 
of water and one small piece of poor soap. 

" The officials were very free with their hands 
or whips, maintaining that a common soldier 
would do his duty only through fear of physical 
suffering. Patients, too, who writhed when the 
doctor cruelly probed a wound or used a knife 
freely, were often struck to make them keep 
still. We put a stop to the beating of servants, 
and after one patient died, from shock appar- 
ently, after undergoing a very painful operation 



26 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

without anesthetic, dressings and operations 
were more humanely done. 

" Sister Martha was a splendidly trained 
nurse, with several years of experience in Ger- 
man hospitals and clinics. She had all the quali- 
ties of a German general and ordered everybody 
about from the head doctor to the humblest 
nurse. Inferiors almost worshipped her, and to 
them her word was law, but men who, because 
of their military rank, should have been manag- 
ing affairs, resented being ordered about by a 
woman. Jokingly they called her * Bin bashi 
(Major) Martha.' However, they realized that 
the things she demanded were reasonable and 
necessary for the good of the work. 

" In spite of seemingly insurmountable difH- 
culties, in a short time there was a marked 
change in the comfort and efBciency of the hos- 
pital. The patients could not find words to ex- 
press their gratitude, and it was not uncommon 
to hear an old patient telling a new one in re- 
gard to one or the other of us that there was 
* no better doctor in the whole country than 
she.' I knew little about nursing, but I kept 
the nurses, and even the doctors sometimes, at- 
tending to business, and I administered to the 



m A TUEKISH HOSPITAL 27 

poor men generous doses of cheer and encour- 
agement which I am sure often did them more 
good than the stuff the doctors prescribed with- 
out knowing what was the matter with them. 
The medicines ordered were given or not, ac- 
cording to the temper of the head druggist, who 
altered prescriptions to suit himself. Some days 
no medicines were given at all because there 
was no one in the drug room who had skill or 
inclination to prepare them. 

** One of the duties I enjoyed most was choos- 
ing patients to be sent to the American hospital. 
Dr. Ussher had Red Cross funds for caring for 
a certain number of soldiers in his hospital and 
I had to see that the number wafe kept filled up. 
Sister Martha and I usually chose the ones who, 
we thought, had little chance of recovery if they 
remained where they were. The doctors were 
always glad to get rid of troublesome cases. 

" Every evening I went to see how the men 
liked their new quarters. After a real bath, 
clean bed, clean clothes, they looked like differ- 
ent beings. As soon as I appeared all would 
begin to talk at once. * We never knew there 
was such a place as this on earth. This is 
heaven. Just look at us, we are clean and we 



28 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

have had enough to eat to-day. They give us 
all we want, and it is so good ! God grant you 
life for your kindness to us ! ' 

" We had been told at the beginning that we 
must make no attempt to change the religion of 
the Moslem patients, but for a long time we 
were allowed to give out portions of Scripture 
to them to read. These were very eagerly 
sought for, and the few who could read were 
kept busy reading aloud to the others. The 
doctor who had permitted this left for the front 
after a time and the next morning the superin- 
tendent of the hospital collected all the books 
and tracts and would not allow us to give others. 
The men often asked us what salary we were 
receiving from the government for our services, 
and they could not comprehend why we should 
be working for nothing for the Turkish Gov- 
ernment. This gave us the opportunity we 
sought of telling them of the love of Christ, and 
that we were serving them because of that 
love." 



IV 

DURING THE SIEGE 

"^"^ THEN, in compliance with Djevdet 
^y^ Bey's request, we decided, April 
I7th, to stay both night and day 
at the hospital for a time, we were given very 
comfortable quarters, a large, sunny room 
in a house next the hospital. The superintend- 
ent was obliged to furnish rugs from his own 
home and I believe some of the furniture was 
his. A soldier was assigned to wait on us, which 
he did very nicely, when he was not away bury- 
ing his father-in-law or attending to some other 
business. Of food we did not have a great vari- 
ety — meat, milk and cooking butter in abun- 
dance, and occasionally other things. We had 
to eat the hospital bread, there was no other — 
dark, half-baked stuff full of straw and grit. Our 
enjoyment of it did not increase when we saw it 
thrown upon the ground in dirty sacks from the 

same wagon in which the bodies of the dead 

29 



30 THE TRAGEDY OP BITLIS 

soldiers were taken to the graveyard. We fried 
it and ate it and tried to forget. We knew that 
Djevdet Bey was anxious to have us made as 
comfortable as possible, but we did not know 
until it was too late that he occasionally sent us 
dainties for our table. The chief doctor ate 
them and told us afterwards what a good dinner 
he had had. 

" The siege of Van began on the 20th of 
April, 1915, early in the morning. We could 
hear the cracking of the rifles, seemingly from 
every direction, and the booming of the cannon 
as they fired from the old city ' Castle ' down 
onto the houses in the walled city in a vain 
effort to destroy them. The singing of the bul- 
lets at night as they came near our quarters 
forced us to abandon our beds near the win- 
dows and sleep on the floor. During the first 
day or two we found it hard to work or to rest. 
We pictured our Armenian friends as being 
driven from their homes and cruelly murdered 
without being able to defend themselves. Then 
an Armenian doctor, who was being held at the 
hospital as a prisoner, told us how the Arme- 
nians had prepared themselves for what they 
knew must come before long. Later the 



DURING THE SIEGE 31 

wounded Turkish soldiers who were brought to 
the hospital often said, ' This is no way to fight. 
We can do nothing against these Armenians. 
They fight from behind the walls of their houses 
where we cannot see them and we don't know 
where to shoot. We are in plain sight in the 
streets and they shoot us down.' Upon that we 
felt better. 

" During the siege we received a call or two 
from a man calling himself a German officer. 
As I remember him, he wore the uniform of a 
Turkish captain. He told us that he was a na- 
tive of Venezuela, had been in Alaska and had 
been a cowboy on our own Western plains. He 
had also been to school in Germany and claimed 
to have a commission in the German army. 
One day he sent a note to Sister Martha, who 
immediately said, ' This settles it. He is not a 
German officer, for no man who writes German 
like this would ever receive a commission in our 
army.' 

" From his own story we knew that he di- 
rected the bombardment of the walled city, but 
he acknowledged that it had not been a very 
successful piece of work. 

" * The cannon-balls go through the thick 



32 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

mud walls of the houses without destroying 
them, and the Armenians are grateful to us for 
having made another opening for them to shoot 
us through/ His contempt for the Turks was 
great, and we could not keep from laughing as 
he told how the men went about carrying ex- 
plosives in their arms and lighted cigarettes in 
their mouths. Some of the awful wrecks of men 
we saw who had been blown up by their own 
cannon or ammunition proved that the common 
soldiers did not fully understand the nature of 
the materials with which they had to deal. 

" Captain de Nogales, as he called himself, 
was evidently a ' soldier of fortune,* adding to 
his already varied experiences by helping the 
Turks exterminate the Armenians. There was 
a large mirror in the room. At the close of each 
call the captain would bid us good-bye with a 
handshake and a low bow, then straighten up, 
click his heels in true German fashion, salute 
his own reflection in the mirror, turn, bow to us 
again and march out. His stay in Van was 
short, and then he was off in search of new 
adventures. 

" The one spring-wagon was kept busy bring- 
ing the wounded to the hospital and Sister 



DTJEING THE SIEGE 33 

Martha and I were often kept in the operating 
room until nine or ten at night without any 
supper, working with the Armenian surgeon on 
the men who needed immediate operations. 
The Turkish doctor, who was supposed to be at 
the head of things, usually left before dark. 
Sister Martha never thought about herself, but 
always and only how she could relieve the suf- 
ferings of others, and often she was so weak 
that she could scarcely climb the stairs to our 
room. Sometimes she was in such great pain 
that she would sink to the floor unable to stand 
up. No one besides myself knew of the trouble 
that caused this suffering, and she never allowed 
it to interfere with her work. 

" The Turks were furious against the Arme- 
nians, and always glad to find some new proof 
of their * treachery.' The doctors said, * See 
what kind of men your Armenians are * when 
one or two were brought in wounded by dum- 
dum, or by poisoned bullets. They stopped 
talking when we told them that each one of the 
men thus wounded had been shot by mistake by 
Turkish soldiers. 

" Djevdet Bey's * ten days ' passed, and still 
another ten, and the end seemed no nearer than 



34 THE TRAGEDY OP BITLIS 

at the first. Suddenly there began the hurried 
transfer of patients across the lake to Bitlis, 
We were told that this was only to make room 
for other patients, but before many days they 
said that the hospital was to be abandoned, and 
asked Sister Martha and me if we would go to 
Bitlis to help there. Before making our decision 
we called on the Governor, who expressed deep 
appreciation of all we had done and a desire that 
we might see fit to continue our services in 
Bitlis. However, he promised to do all in his 
power to get us safely through to the Armenian 
Hnes if we wished, where a white flag would in- 
sure safe conduct to our homes. One of the of- 
ficials suggested that we would be obliged to 
sign a paper to the effect that we went at our 
own desire, thus absolving the Turkish Govern- 
ment from all responsibility in case anything 
happened to us. The remark helped us to de- 
cide that it was best to go with the patients. 
On our return to the hospital this decision was 
strengthened by the Armenian workers who 
came and begged us again not to leave them or 
they would all be killed.** 



ACROSS THE LAKE TO BITLIS 

" X SEEM to be unable to recall dates, but I 
I know we left Van on a Thursday or Fri- 
day night about the middle of May, 1915. 
We had very little baggage — only one change 
of clothing and a little bedding. Our food con- 
sisted mostly of a lot of hospital bread fried. 
We left the hospital in the ambulance and had 
to go a roundabout way to get to the place 
where the boats were waiting in order to avoid 
passing too near the city gate, where the enemy 
might be lying in wait. It was dark as Egypt 
and we had to walk a long way through the 
sand on the lake shore before we finally found 
the boats. By the aid of a feeble lantern we 
clambered up one gangplank across a sailboat 
and down another narrow, springy board onto 
the deck of the little gasoline launch that was 
to carry us across the lake. 

" Although we were told that they had been 
35 



36 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

waiting only for us, it was after two o'clock in 
the morning before we were under way. What 
caused the delay we never knew, but the cap- 
tain had to go several times to consult with the 
Governor, who lived some distance away. 

*' Djevdet Bey had given written orders that 
no one was to be carried on the motor-boat ex- 
cept the two Schwesters and the two doctors, 
but we found the cabin occupied by a Turkish 
family who also had private permission from 
the Governor to go with us and naturally they 
intended to avail themselves of it. Sister 
Martha and I were invited to share the cabin 
with them, but as there seemed to be not even 
standing room inside we declined as politely as 
possible. But our bedding was on one of the 
sailboats, it was bitterly cold and we did not 
look forward with any enthusiasm to a night on 
deck sailing across Lake Van. Finally the cap- 
tain gave us his cabin. It was a tiny place with 
wooden benches a foot wide on three sides and 
not long enough to let one stretch out. How- 
ever, we managed to get a little sleep, and at 
daylight we were on deck again. The sea was 
calm and beautiful and as a good breeze was 
blowing, the eight large sailboats with us (fiv^ 



ACROSS THE LAKE TO BITLIS 37 

filled with hospital patients and three with 
Turkish families fleeing from the oncoming 
Russians) went along at a good pace. 

" Later our boat stopped at an island on 
which there was a large Armenian monastery. 
We climbed the hill eagerly with visions of a 
good breakfast of eggs and milk and bread, 
which the priests always willingly prepared for 
travellers stopping there. We had difficulty in 
gaining admission into the building, which was 
a most unusual experience ; when we got in we 
found two aged priests who seemed dazed and 
either unable or unwilling to talk, and who re- 
fused to give us anything to eat. At last we 
gathered that the day before a lot of Turkish 
soldiers had come to the island, killed one or 
more of the priests and some of the orphan boys 
and carried off all the sheep and chickens and 
everything eatable in the place. In the church 
we found everything overturned. Vestments 
and other articles used in the church services 
were scattered about on the floor, torn, broken 
and destroyed. Silver crosses had been carried 
away, every scrap of silver or gold had been 
torn ofiF the mitres and other articles; not one 
thing of value was to be found anywhere. 



38 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

" As we sorrowfully walked back to the boat, 
the captain, who was furious at the ruin we had 
seen, told me that on his last trip he had carried 
orders from Djevdet Bey to the soldiers that 
the island and its inhabitants were to be left 
unmolested. Evidently this was one of the 
orders of which we heard more later, issued 
with the additional information that the recipi- 
ent was free to use his own judgment about 
obeying it. 

" The morning was not very far advanced 
when the wind died down entirely, a very com- 
mon occurrence on Lake Van, and the sailboats 
were unable to go on. Leaving the sails un- 
furled to catch any little breeze that might come 
along, the sailors plied the heavy, clumsy oars 
in a vain attempt to reach Tadvan, the seaport 
of Bitlis, before night. Had it not been for the 
motor-boat the poor men would have had to go 
hungry all day, as all the bread for the trip was 
on one boat. We went back and forth distribut- 
ing bread, and then stopped the motor, for 
strict orders had been given the captain that he 
was to remain with the sailboats until they 
reached their destination. Not a drop of water 
had been provided for the journey, and as the 



ACEOSS THE LAKE TO BITLIS 39 

sun grew hotter the cries of the men that they 
would die of thirst grew more and more insist- 
ent. Finally the captain declared he could stand 
it no longer, and, orders or no orders, he was 
going for water. In a short time we reached 
Tadvan, where he gathered up all the jugs he 
could find in the town, filled them, and, leaving 
us on shore, returned to the sailboats and their 
passengers. 

** Tadvan was full of soldiers, some of them 
displaying and mocking at the crosses and other 
dedicated things they had taken from the island 
monastery. The villagers were frightened and 
crowded around us. We tried to calm them by 
saying that the government had assured us that 
there would be no massacres in the Bitlis 
province. Armenians, like the Van Armenians, 
who, according to official report, had rebelled, 
must be punished, but those who were loyal to 
the government had nothing to fear. Some of 
the people had escaped from near-by villages in 
the Van province and their minds were full of 
the horrors through which they had lived. 

" The sailboats anchored at a village not far 
from Tadvan. We went over there the next 
day to do what we could for our patients while 



40 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

waiting for ox-carts to take us to Bitlis. We 
took up our abode in one end of a large stable, 
billeted our men in village homes and fixed up 
a place out-of-doors for dressing wounds. One 
man was found whose arm had to be amputated 
at once. We contrived a table just inside the 
stable door from the two boxes which contained 
instruments and other supplies. The man was 
not very tall, but in order that his head might 
rest on the ' table/ his legs had to hang over 
the other end. The operation was successful. 

" During the day Sister Martha and I were 
startled by a strange sound that seemed to 
come from behind a hill some distance away, 
and drew nearer and nearer. Then a crowd of 
fifty or more people appeared approaching the 
village, half chanting, half wailing, in the pecul- 
iar way Armenians have of showing grief and 
telling their troubles. When they saw soldiers 
about they left the road, sat down on the hillside 
and, rocking back and forth, and wringing their 
hands, they repeated over and over, after the 
manner of their race, the story of the awful 
massacre that had taken place in their village 
the day before. Wives and mothers told how 
their little babies had been killed and their 



ACEOSS THE LAKE TO BITLIS 41 

bodies thrown into the lake and others had been 
thrown in alive, and how their attractive brides 
and daughters had been carried off by the 
Kurds. When they were calm enough to speak 
coherently they said that the attacking party 
had not been one of Turkish soldiers but of 
Kurds who claimed to have come from the 
Erzerum region and who said that the Russians 
had carried off their sheep and cattle, and so 
they were making good their losses by carrying 
away the property of the Armenians. Russians 
and Armenians were both Christians, so it was 
all the same. 

" There was but one man in this group of sur- 
vivors, and he was badly wounded, as were most 
of the women and some of the children. After 
having their wounds dressed they went on their 
way again towards Bitlis, where they expected 
to complain to the government and demand pro- 
tection and redress. They had no idea that the 
affair had been ordered by the government. 

" We were obliged to spend several days in 
this village. One day we saw a small party of 
Kurds evidently reconnoitering above the place. 
A soldier was sent out to inquire their business, 
and then they went back in the direction from 



42 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

which they had come. They had come to raid 
this village also, but postponed it on account of 
our presence. They did not go far away, for we 
were hardly out of sight on our return to Tad- 
van before they began their work of murder 
and destruction. 

" Another night had to be passed in Tadvan. 
The people were even more terror stricken than 
before, and several crowded into the stable 
where we spent the night, hoping for greater 
protection. All night long we heard shooting 
and were assured that it was only the soldiers 
fighting to protect the Christian villagers from 
attacking parties of Kurds. 

" Our caravan during the last stage of our 
journey to Bitlis consisted of several ox-carts 
loaded as heavily as possible with boxes and 
bedding, a patient or two on top, the weakest 
bound on. It was fearful to watch the carts in 
front of us lurching this way and that as the 
wheels went over big stones or into ruts in 
the road. The poor fellows with no strength to 
help themselves cried out in fear. We were 
powerless to help matters. 

" We kept passing groups of mounted Kurds 
going to or returning from their work of de- 



ACEOSS THE LAKE TO BITLIS 43 

struction. Upon the hillsides groups of men 
were making trenches. At the entrance to the 
city we were stopped and taken to a poHce sta- 
tion, where a very careful account was recorded 
of each one. Sister Martha and I were regis- 
tered as ' German doctors.' The question of 
how to dispose of us properly seemed to be an 
embarrassing one until I announced that I was 
an American and we expected to be cared for at 
the American mission. 

" We had sent a telegram the day before from 
Tadvan telling of our coming, and Miss Ely and 
Mr. Knapp had ridden out in the afternoon to 
meet us. Naturally our failure to appear had 
caused some little anxiety, and when we did ar- 
rive, wet, hungry and exhausted, we received a 
hearty welcome. No one who has not been 
through a similar experience could possibly im- 
agine what it meant to us to be once more in a 
quiet Christian home, eating a well-cooked, 
nicely served dinner after four weeks of con- 
stant association with Turkish soldiers and 
officers." 



VI 

TWELVE THOUSAND REFUGEES IN BITLIS 

MISS McLaren and Sister Martha ar- 
rived in Bitlis five days after the 
departure of Mr. and Mrs. Maynard 
and Miss Uline. In that short interval deporta- 
tions and massacres had begun in the province, 
and Armenians, mostly women and children, 
driven from their homes by Kurds acting under 
the orders of the government, began pouring 
into the city. About seven hundred took refuge 
on the American premises. 

The compound was rather small and sur- 
rounded by a high stone wall with gabled top. 
A great arched gateway opened upon the street; 
its huge, double-leaved wooden doors were 
closed at night, barred with four heavy iron bars 
and bolted with a wooden beam about six inches 
square. This form of safeguarding homes or 
schools was common throughout the city, and 
windows everywhere were cross-barred with 
inch-thick iron rods. 

44 



REFUGEES IN BITLIS 46 

There were four buildings in this enclosure; 
the large church, the girls' schoolhouse, the 
boys* schoolhouse and the Maynards' residence, 
occupied after their departure by Mr. Knapp. 
Unfortunately the other missionary residence, 
though very near the compound, was separated 
from it by the right of way of a Turkish neigh- 
bour so that its occupants had to pass through 
the public street to schools, church and the 
home of their associates, a procedure most in- 
convenient and even unsafe in times of political 
unrest. 

This house had belonged to Rev. and Mrs. 
George C. Knapp, who had been missionary 
pioneers in Bitlis, and it had also been the 
home of Miss Charlotte Ely for the greater 
part of the forty-seven years she had spent in 
this city. With her lived Miss Myrtle O. Shane, 
now in charge of the girls* school, and Miss 
McLaren and Sister Martha became her guests. 

Reports came in every day of the destruction 
of this village and that in the neighbourhood of 
Bitlis. The Governor, when appealed to by the 
missionaries, pretended to be greatly troubled 
by all this lawlessness, which he attributed to a 
noted Kurdish brigand, and declared he was 



46 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

making every effort to put an end to it. Yet 
crowds of old men, women and children con- 
tinued to flee terror-stricken to Bitlis until there 
were about 12,000 in the city. Some were cared 
for in an Armenian church, and the chief priest 
of the city had rehef funds which he distributed 
every day. Eight thousand were allotted to the 
Americans; Mr. Knapp soon used up what relief 
funds he had and telegraphed Constantinople 
for more. Even when this was received there 
was only enough to allow each person a very 
small sum daily, barely enough to keep her alive. 
Many of these refugees were wounded; one 
little fellow six or seven years old had four or 
five wounds, some penetrating the lungs, made 
by a dagger in the hand of a Moslem; a little 
girl had her arm shattered by a Turkish bullet — 
instances could be many times multiplied. The 
superintendent of the hospital gave the neces- 
sary supplies for treating these wounded people 
and a place to house them. The "women's 
hospital " was known to the police and so was 
never molested, and the number of poor crea- 
tures who sought refuge and healing increased 
until larger quarters had to be found. 

The wounded Turks brought from Van had 



EEPUGEES IN BITLIS 47 

been put into an old monastery outside the city, 
but the arrangement did not prove satisfactory; 
the monastery was turned into a convalescent 
home and the surgical cases brought into Ar- 
menian houses near the mission premises, from 
which the owners were ejected. The chief doc- 
tor sent orders that the Protestant church was 
to be turned over to the hospital authorities at 
once. Mr. Knapp refused to do this without a 
written request from the VaH. Later, the mis- 
sionaries invited the doctor to an afternoon tea 
at the Ely residence, and when some of Miss 
Ely's delicious cake had made him relax a little 
from his unfriendly attitude, they formally of- 
fered him the use of the church for hospital pur- 
poses. Miss McLaren and Sister Martha con- 
tinued to work among these patients as they 
had in Van. 

Early in June the refugees were gathered up 
and driven through the streets by gendarmes. 
From the bluff overlooking the southern road 
great numbers of them could be seen herded to- 
gether in readiness to be sent south. 

" These ignorant village Armenians are not 
fit to live — they ought to die/' said a Turkish 
doctor to Mr. Knapp in the presence of all the 



48 THE TEAGBDY OF BITLIS 

Americans. And very soon reports were 
brought back by women and children who es- 
caped that the refugees were being killed by 
Kurds on the road. One woman, fingers shot 
off and a gash on her face, said that the gen- 
darmes had told the party in which she was 
taken that at a certain point farther on the 
Kurds would attack them. This was not a 
warning, for those who tried to escape were 
shot down. Mr. Knapp and the native pastor 
asked the Vali to allow these deported people to 
go by the Moush road to avoid Kurdish attacks. 
He replied that the Moush region was quiet and 
must remain so. 

There was an epidemic of typhus. Five or six 
of the refugees on the mission premises died 
every day; at first their bodies were buried in a 
garden across the street, but later this was not 
permitted and they had to be buried in the 
mission compound. In digging these graves the 
bones were unearthed of many who had lost 
their lives in the massacre of 1895 and who had 
been buried here to keep at least their dead 
bodies inviolate from their murderers. 



VII 

MASSACRE OF THE MEN 

THE government officials constantly as- 
sured the Americans that only the vil- 
lages near the border wert being 
evacuated and that no harm would come to any 
one in the city. 

The Russians v^rere reported to be drav^ing 
nearer every day; the authorities had made 
their preparations to set fire to the principal 
buildings and leave on short notice. A band of 
Kurds from Motgan, notorious as men who had 
always defied the government, came to the city 
one day, and when they left each was equipped 
with a modern rifle and plenty of ammunition. 

Neither the Americans nor the Armenians 
then suspected a massacre ordered by the gov- 
ernment, but they had no doubts as to what the 
Motgan Kurds would do as soon as the garrison 
should be withdrawn. Armenians begged to be 
allowed to come to the American premises for 
protection. A general permission to do so 

49 



60 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

would inevitably have created a panic and pre- 
cipitated trouble with the authorities, but the 
famiUes of the pastor and teachers and a few 
others were allowed to come quietly and others 
were promised admittance in case of actual 
danger. The condition was made that all fire- 
arms of those admitted should be turned over 
to Mr. Knapp. 

On June 22d Rev. Khachig Vartanian, who 
had been pastor of the Protestant church and 
ofhcial representative of the Protestant commu- 
nity before the government for many years, one 
of the most influential and deeply respected citi- 
zens of Bitlis, was seized and imprisoned while 
on his way to the Vali on behalf of some refu- 
gees. 

On June 23d the American premises were sur- 
rounded by armed soldiers and police. Mr. 
Knapp was in the Maynard house, now his own 
residence, and the four ladies in Miss Ely's 
house. Feeling that if anything was going ta 
happen her place was in the girls' school, Miss 
Shane started to go there, but the guard at the 
gate leading to the street forced her to return 
at the point of a gun. 

Officers and soldiers, armed to the teeth as if 



MASSACEE OF THE MEN 51 

they were after a band of robbers instead of a 
few law-abiding Armenians, now appeared, 
sought out and arrested every man and every 
boy over ten years of age on the mission prem- 
ises and Hned them up in the school-yard, 
guarded by gendarmes as if they were criminals. 
One soldier was stationed on the roof opposite, 
where he kept jumping about like a monkey, 
his gun constantly pointed at the group. 

Resistance would have been worse than use- 
less; the possession and use of firearms would 
have sealed the fate not only of the men but of 
the women and children. The latter crowded 
around their husbands, brothers and fathers, 
clinging to them and crying bitterly. 

"Why do you make such a fuss? They are 
only going to be examined about something. 
Of course they are all innocent and will soon be 
back," said the soldiers. 

Mr. Knapp hurried to the Vali, taking Sister 
Martha with him in the hope that a German 
might get at the true meaning of the affair and 
perhaps secure the men's release. The Vali re- 
ceived them in his usual polite way, listened 
quietly to their story and request and then said 
that the government kn^w ^hat letters from the 



62 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

enemy in Van had been received by some Ar- 
menian or Armenians in Bitlis and the object of 
arresting all the men was to discover who these 
recipients were. When found, they would be 
treated as traitors, while all others would be set 
free as soon as their innocence was established. 
No resistance would be tolerated; if any were 
attempted it would put in immediate danger all 
on the premises. 

The men were marched off to prison. A good 
old man, who had taught in the school for many 
years, comforted his terrified pupils: 

"Do not be afraid; they are persecuting us 
for our religion, but we shall remain faithful to 
Christ." A few boys were sent back as too 
young. 

Throughout the city men and boys were ar- 
rested, on the street, in their shops, in their 
homes. If a man resisted he was killed. Those 
who hid themselves in their houses and refused 
to come out were burned with their families. 

On one occasion a man was discovered to be 
hiding in a house, part of which was visible from 
the windows of the girls' school. It was as if 
hounds had scented a fox. Turks ran yelping 
from all directions. Some climbed upon the flat 



MASSACRE OF THE MEN 63 

roof and leaned over with their guns pointing 
downward in order to have a good chance at 
him should he try to escape. The commotion 
lasted about two hours, but Miss Shane, who 
saw its beginning, did not see its end. 

In one house where there was a large house- 
hold, many sons living with their famiUes in 
their fathers home, according to the patri- 
archal custom of the country, there were ten 
guns which were used with telling effect against 
the police. 

It was finally fired from the inside and some 
of its inmates burned. The rest retired to the 
cellar, where they had stored provisions and 
water for a siege. The police soon found out 
that there were people there still alive and be- 
gan to try to get them out. Miss McLaren, hap- 
pening to pass at the time, saw a lot of soldiers 
on the street with their guns pointed towards 
the building. Police with beams were trying to 
batter down the cellar walls, always keeping out 
of range from the windows. In the evening two 
badly wounded little boys were brought from 
that house to Sister Martha. The men had been 
obliged to surrender at last. The father, a 
lawyer who had been in the service of the gov- 



54 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

ernment many years, was brought from the 
prison to view the remains of his home and to 
see what it meant for a subject to defy his gov- 
ernment. 

This was the strongest resistance to arrest in 
the city. In most cases the men went quietly, 
trusting that they would soon be released. The 
government succeeded perfectly in deceiving 
the people with its assurances. The Americans 
also were more than once misled by its prom- 
ises. 

All the Armenian nurses, druggists and or- 
derlies in the hospital were also taken. It mat- 
tered not that they were the most intelligent 
and faithful helpers, and that there was no one 
left to prepare medicines for the Turkish pa- 
tients — all had to go. 

The first victim was a young man employed 
in the military hospital, a graduate of Euphrates 
College, Harpoot. He had tried to give his 
friends at home some idea of the situation in 
Bitlis by telling about the swarms of locusts that 
had visited the province shortly before. His 
allusion was understood by the censor, he was 
arrested, marched off under guard, and a Kurd- 
ish neighbour told the Americans that he was 



MASSACRE OF THE MEN 56 

taken only a short distance from the city and 
there killed. 

There were two Armenian surgeons in the 
city, young men, earnest, faithful and enthusi- 
astic over their work, not influenced in the per- 
formance of their duties by the thought of what 
was being done to their people. One morning 
they told Sister Martha and Miss McLaren that 
they had been ordered to go to Sert to take 
charge of a hospital which Djevdet Bey was 
starting there. A Turkish doctor later told the 
missionaries that he had seen their bodies lying 
by the roadside about six miles from the city. 

Sister Martha and Miss McLaren had brought 
with them from Van two Armenian boys who 
had been working in the military hospital there 
and for whom Sister Martha had secured from 
the miHtary authorities papers insuring their 
safety. When the Bitlis men were taken from 
the city, one of these lads was ill in a hospital. 
Sister Martha, hearing that he had been taken 
out with the other Armenians, went to the chief 
of police to inform him of these papers and to 
ask that the boy might be sent back. The chief 
said that he would send an order to this effect. 
When she went to see him again he told her that 



66 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

it was impossible to bring the boy back, as he 
had been killed on the day that he was taken 
out. His companion was spared. 

For several days the Protestant women took 
food to the prison and were allowed to talk 
freely with the men who crowded around the 
windows. The prisoners sent word to the mis- 
sionaries that they had done right in not permit- 
ting weapons on the mission premises; that the 
whole afifair had been so fiendishly planned by 
the government that there had been no chance 
of escape for the men from the first; they were 
praying that the efforts made to save the women 
and children might succeed. 

After a week of this the women were told one 
morning that all the Protestants had been put 
into an underground dungeon. Various stories 
were heard later as to what happened to these 
men, but all that was definitely known was that 
they were taken out in groups and killed not far 
from the city. One story, the truth of which 
Mr. Knapp believed to be well established, was 
that one group of TOO men was taken out to a 
place about six miles from the city and lined up 
on either side of trenches already prepared. 
Kurds then came upon them and killed them. 



MASSACEE OF THE MEN 57 

Several of the men on the mission premises 
had hidden during the first search and so es- 
caped. One of these was Kevork Effendi Koo- 
yoomjian, a graduate of Central College, Ain- 
tab, and head teacher in the boys' school. But 
he decided that he could not hope to save him- 
self and that if he were discovered it might work 
harm to the women and children under the care 
of the missionaries. He had married but a few 
years before one of the teachers in the girls' 
school, a girl most attractive in person and 
lovely in character. Their courtship had been 
a romantic one, their betrothal not the usual 
businesslike arrangement between two families, 
but a real " love match." At her wedding, 
Heghene, instead of being shrouded Oriental 
fashion in a shapeless dark silk mantle, had 
looked like an American bride with her lace veil, 
orange-flower wreath and bridal bouquet — a 
fair vision that had impressed itself upon the 
imagination of all the young people who had 
been present. Their short married life had been 
a very happy one, except for the death of their 
first child ; they had at this time a beautiful little 
girl one year old. 

The day after Kevork EflFendi had made his 



58 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

decision the police sent word that they were 
coming to search the American premises for 
men who were in hiding. That morning the 
young couple spent several hours alone to- 
gether, then joined in the main room of the 
school the others who meant to surrender, and 
waited calmly the event that would too surely 
separate them. She sat at his feet with the baby 
in her arms. 

" Miss Shane, if we should both be taken will 
you not keep our baby? " asked Kevork Effendi. 

When the police came he and his young 
brother-in-law shook hands with their friends as 
composedly as if they were merely going for a 
walk, and no one seeing the sweet look of cour- 
age on Deegeen Heghene's face would have 
guessed that the man was her husband and the 
boy her brother. Kevork EflFendi looked strong 
and triumphant, for although he knew he was 
going to his death, the night spent in prayer 
had prepared him for his fate and he had no 
fear. Had those around him had eyes to see 
they would have beheld one whose form was 
** like unto the Son of God,*' walking in the 
fiery furnace beside him. 



VIII 

DEPORTATION OF THE WOMEN 

^— »-^WO or three days after the men on the 
■ American premises were taken to 



1 



prison the Vali told Mr. Knapp that an 
order had come for a general deportation of 
Armenians, but that families would be allowed 
to go in safety together. Yet within a few days 
(June 29th or 30th) the poHce began to hound 
women and children out of their homes, insult- 
ing and beating them cruelly and forcing by 
kicks and blows and curses those who fell by the 
wayside to get up and go on. A few escaping 
and coming back with faces mutilated and hands 
cut off substantiated the rumours concerning 
the fate of those who were driven away. The 
Americans, whose premises were still strictly 
guarded, were not allowed to take these poor 
creatures in, but could talk to them at the gate, 
give them bread and a little money, and then 
they would be gathered up and driven away 
again. 

59 



60 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

Miss Shane had taken up her residence in the 
girls' school where, besides her girls, there were 
a number of women and children who had come 
to her for protection. A day or two after their 
deportation began she went with Miss McLaren 
as interpreter to the Vali and requested that the 
schoolgirls and the women with her in the 
school building be allowed to remain. He said 
that she might take her pupils to Harpoot and 
put them in the school there. She knew that the 
school buildings in Harpoot had been taken by 
the government for hospital purposes, and that 
the roads were covered with the bodies of the 
dead ; she thought, too, of the fate of the women 
and little children who would be left behind, and 
replied that if he were sincere in assuring her 
that she could take the girls safely to Harpoot 
he would be willing to have them remajn quietly 
in Bitlis till travelling was safer. He answered 
that an order had come from Constantinople 
that not an Armenian should remain in Bitlis; 
the responsibility was not his. 

" In that case I will not give them up," she 
answered. 

She meant to barricade the school building. 
It seemed necessary to take a firm stand on this 



DEPORTATION OF THE WOMEN 61 

point, and neither she nor her associates be- 
lieved that the authorities would proceed to ex- 
tremes to get possession of these few women 
and girls. 

He finally consented to allow the girls and 
women in the school to remain " until the last." 
She asked to whom she might appeal to insure 
their ultimate safety and he gave her the name 
and address of the military commandant, who 
had decided the matter in regard to the women. 
This man was at the front with his army, so Miss 
Shane immediately wrote to him, sending a 
copy of the letter to the Vali together with the 
list of her women and girls which he had de- 
manded of her. To this letter no answer was 
ever received. 

The missionaries were obliged to promise 
that no more people should be taken into the 
compound and tried to keep this promise as 
their only hope of saving a few. 

The police seemed to have gone mad in their 
thirst for Armenian blood. One day Miss Shane 
saw from her window a white-haired old woman 
stumbling along the street beneath a rain of 
blows from a gendarme's gun. .A younger 
woman, herself so weak she could scarcely walk, 



62 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

was trying to support her. Suddenly the gen- 
darme sprang in front of them and pointed his 
bayonet at the old woman as if to run it through 
her body. She fell in a heap at his feet. Where- 
upon he seized her first by the girdle and then 
by the hair and dragged her along the rough 
street. She was left for dead near the girls' 
school and they were allowed to take her in. 
She had a sweet and gentle face and was found 
to be a member of a well-to-do family. Officials 
were very angry when they found how she had 
been treated, for she was supposed to know 
where a large sum of money was concealed and 
they wanted it. The poor creature did not live 
long enough to tell her secret. 

Another old woman died in the school who 
was found lying in the street outside with just 
strength enough to Hft her hand slightly in an 
eflFort to ward off a dog who was sniffing at her 
face. Several times the missionaries were al- 
lowed to bring inside those who were found in 
a dying condition. 

The screams of women and children could be 
heard at almost any time during the day. The 
cries that rang out through the darkness of the 
night were even more heartrending. 



DEPOETATION OF THE WOMEN 63 

" Once," writes Miss Shane, " I was startled 
from sleep by a woman's shriek of terror, fol- 
lowed by cries and pleadings which were an- 
swered only by the jeering laugh of men. For 
about two hours I could hear the woman's low 
moans, like those of a tortured animal. The 
sound grew fainter and fainter and at last — 
silence. 

" One day I was watching a crowd of women 
and children in the street below. They were 
led by a gendarme to a spot just beneath the 
window, then made to stop. A few women gave 
money to the gendarmes and were then set free. 
They ran frantically hither and thither like 
frightened animals. Where could they go for 
safety? There zvas no safety for them. The 
fiendish grin on the face of the man who had 
released them showed that he relished the sport. 
This incident confirmed to my mind the report 
that gendarmes accepted bribes from the women 
who had a bit of money, but that these women 
were captured again later and taken down the 
road. 

" By working quietly we had managed to take 
in about thirty little children who had come 
starving to our gates and the guards there had 



64 THE TRAGEDY OP BITLIS 

not objected. The first few indeed had been 
brought to us by Turkish soldiers. We felt 
sure we should not be able to keep them but 
would provide for them as long as possible. 
One of these was the daughter of our teacher in 
Tadvan. Her eyes had the deep blue of the sky 
when a storm is threatening. She was always 
quiet, but so sweet that she never passed un- 
noticed, her little face so serious, so solemn. So 
were the faces of all the little ones. One of the 
things that impressed me most was that the 
little children never smiled, always that look of 
hurt wonder on their faces. In her quaint baby 
fashion she once told the girls the name of the 
Kurd who had killed her father, and added, 
' May he die a death like that' She was taken 
ill after a while and did not recover. 

" Finally a policeman came to take these 
orphans away. Among them was a little girl 
between two and three years of age, a grand- 
child in one of the best families in Bitlis. She 
had the sweetest, most winning baby face I have 
ever seen. We had all grown to love her. 
When she was put in line with the others 
I rushed forward, took her up in my arms 
and begged to be allowed to keep her. 



DEPOETATION OF THE WOMEN 65 

The policeman refused. Her innocent, trust- 
ful face would have melted a heart of stone. 
She toddled along with the others, but be- 
fore they reached the gate a Turk employed 
in the hospital picked her up and was permitted 
to keep her. The child, however, turned her 
face from him and wriggled and twisted to get 
out of his arms. He took her home and his fam- 
ily tried to win her by kindness, but she was 
obdurate. He finally gave her into the care of 
one of our women. 

" As far as I know, with but one exception, 
the choice of accepting Islam was not given to 
men and boys nor to the poorer classes of 
women. However, many of those belonging to 
wealthy families were urged to become Mos- 
lems. Three women from the principal ward of 
the city came to tell us that if they refused to 
accept Islam they would be sent down the road. 
One of these was the sister of a teacher in our 
girls' school. I was later (when ill in bed) told 
by one of my teachers that this woman had re- 
fused to accept Islam and had been sent off with 
her ten-year-old daughter, and that both had 
been taken by Kurds; the mother had come 
back to the school accompanied by a Kurdish 



66 THE TRAGEDY OP BITUS 

woman and asked her sister for ten liras, saying 
that the Kurds had threatened to kill her daugh- 
ter if she did not give that much money, but if 
she gave it she would be allowed to take her 
daughter away. She received the money, went 
away and was never heard of again. 

" Some time after my illness I was calling on 
a Turkish officer's wife; she and her husband 
had shown kindness to Armenians and were 
friendly to us. She said they had found that 
little ten-year-old girl wandering in the streets 
half naked and in a terrible condition, having 
been maltreated in most inhuman fashion. 
They had taken her in and were having an old 
Armenian woman take care of her. She said 
also that they themselves were out of favour 
with the government because of their lack of 
sympathy with the way in which Armenians 
were being treated and therefore were being 
sent to Aleppo. 

" A little innocent-faced lad, one of our school- 
boys who had found his way back to our prem- 
ises during the evacuation of the city, told me 
that he was one of a large party of women and 
children driven down the road. He had escaped 
a short distance from the city and came back to 



DEPOETATION OF THE WOMEN 67 

the house of a friendly Turk. The Turk, how- 
ever, insisted on his becoming Moslem, so he 
ran away. Before his escape on the road he had 
seen a young woman who was carrying a baby 
shot down because she had not strength to keep 
up with the others. Her body was left lying 
where it fell, the baby still in her arms. 

" One of our pupils, a girl, was sent to prison, 
but later was released and allowed to go back to 
the house of Mustifa Bey, superintendent of 
hospitals, where she had been staying. She told 
me that the prison was crowded with women 
and children kept there without food or water.'' 

Many women were kept in the courtyard of 
an Armenian church, others in a large house 
just across the street from the American prem- 
ises and still others were herded together like 
cattle in an open field between the public high- 
way and the river at a place called the " Arab 
Bridge," not far from the city. Soldiers were 
stationed near by to guard them. There was no 
shelter, no privacy. Day after day these women, 
many of them accustomed to comfort if not lux- 
ury in their homes, were kept there in the hot 
July sun and entirely at the mercy of the beasts 
who guarded them. A few managed to escape 



68 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

by bribing the guards, or under cover of the 
night, and the stories they told the missionaries 
of their sufferings at the hands of the soldiers 
were too awful to repeat. 

After a while the young and attractive women 
were taken into Turkish or Kurdish homes and 
the rest sent " down the road," most of them to 
death. Many threw themselves and their chil- 
dren into the river to escape the suffering and 
abuse they were unable to endure longer. 

Some of the prominent citizens had provided 
their families with poison, which they took 
rather than fall into the hands of the Turks. 
Other women with their children refused to 
leave their burning houses, counting that kind 
of death preferable to life in a Turkish harem. 
The thirteen-year-old daughter of Pastor 
Khachig, seeing a bottle marked " Poison " in 
Miss McLaren's room, told the women in the 
house, " There is a bottle of poison in Miss 
McLaren's room, and if the Turks try to take 
me away I am going to drink some." 

The deportation of the women began the first 
week in July. It continued for months with 
but one week's interruption. 



IX 

THE RUSSIAN ARMY APPROACHES 

THE Russian army, after its occupation 
of Van, moved slowly westward, meet- 
ing with stubborn resistance at many 
points. The motor-boat which had brought 
Miss McLaren and Sister Martha across the 
lake and one of the large sailboats were loaded 
at Tadvan with ammunition to be taken back 
to the Turkish army. They were ordered first 
to Vostan, a town about seven hours from Van, 
from there ordered back across the lake to a 
village called Surp, not far from Tadvan and 
near to where a battle was to be fought. 

On arrival at Surp the captain and his brother 
went to report to the authorities, leaving the 
boats in charge of two Armenian boatmen, with 
two guards on shore. The boatmen shot the 
guards with the captain's gun and sailed back to 

the Russians with the ammunition. 

69 



70 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

The people of the village of Avantz, the sea- 
port of Van, were mostly sailors, and whether 
from choice or by compulsion had been most 
faithful in their service to the government. Had 
it not been for them the Turks would never 
have been able to transport their hospital pa- 
tients and equipment across the lake and many 
of the civil population would have been unable 
to flee towards Bitlis before the advancing 
enemy. When the general massacre of April 
19th took place in Van province this place was 
left untouched. Of course the Turks reaHzed 
how much depended upon the loyalty of these 
villagers. At the time of the incident related 
above they had no further use for the boats and 
sailors, and saying that they must have revenge 
for the murder of the two soldiers and the loss 
of the ammunition, they gathered together all 
the boatmen who could be found in Tadvan and 
drowned them in the lake. 

About the middle of July the Russian army 
drew very near to Bitlis ; those living on the out- 
skirts of the city could hear the firing. The 
Moslem population fled. The Governor sent 
word to the Americans that they would have to 
go. But as Miss Shane was ill at the time, they 



THE EUSSIAN AEMY APPEOACHES 71 

decided to remain. They had been constantly 
exposed to typhus, and Miss Shane had fallen 
ill on July 4th. 

It may be noted in passing, that at this very 
time five of the missionaries in Van also fell ill 
of typhus which they had contracted from Mos- 
lem refugees, one thousand of whom they cared 
for on their premises after the Russian occupa- 
tion. But there was absolutely no communica- 
tion between the two cities; the Americans in 
each were quite ignorant of the condition of 
their friends in the other. 

Many Moslems when they fled left with the 
missionaries the women and girls whom they 
had taken into their harems, an action that 
seemed to show that their intentions in the first 
place had been kind. 

Other women who had so far escaped capture 
also fled to the Americans for protection from 
the Kurds, who were swarming into the city for 
plunder, knowing that before the arrival of the 
Russians they could flee back to safe retreats in 
the mountains. 

" We told them that the Governor had for- 
bidden our taking any more Armenians in, but 
that it seemed now the Governor himself would 



72 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

be leaving shortly and if they cared to take their 
chance with us, we would do what we could, but 
if the government should demand them we 
could probably not prevent their being taken. 
They said that if they remained in the city they 
would undoubtedly fall victims to the Kurds and 
would take their chance with us." 

Even the soldiers fled. The Turkish patients 
who could be moved were sent off towards Diar- 
bekir, and the others were brought to the Prot- 
estant church and the English Consulate (a 
near-by building which had once been the Con- 
sulate), and were given over to the care of Mr. 
Knapp and Sister Martha. American flags were 
put up over the buildings for protection. Later, 
one of the accusations brought against Mr. 
Knapp was that he had put up flags to guide 
the enemy. 

There was a branch of the Ottoman bank in 
Bitlis. The bankers, a Greek and an Italian, 
afraid to remain in the business district on ac- 
count of the Kurds, left it and came to stay 
with Mr. Knapp. The danger was so great that 
the Vali, who was still in the city with a few 
ofificers and soldiers, was asked for a guard and 
gave it. The bankers watched half of the night 



THE RUSSIAN ARMY APPROACHES 73 

and Mr. Knapp the other half for a week. Then 
the bankers left the city, telling the Americans 
before they did so that they (the Americans) 
were in great danger of being attacked by 
Kurds at the instigation of the government to 
prevent their giving information to the enemy. 

Sister Martha was free to act independently 
of the Americans, of course, and the Turks took 
for granted that she would leave with the hos- 
pital authorities. She had great fears of becom- 
ing a prisoner of the Russians and the Ameri- 
cans supposed she would go. One morning she 
came to Miss Shane, whom she had been nurs- 
ing, and said, " I've made my decision. Mustifa 
Bey just came on his horse and was surprised 
that I was not ready to go, but I told him I 
wasn't going. Whatever may be my fate in 
Russia I will not go one step farther with the 
Turks." 

A few hours after it was reported that the 
Vali was on the point of leaving, the news was 
brought that the Russians were retreating. 
Word was immediately sent out to the fleeing 
populace to return and by the 24th the Turks 
were back again. 



THE PASSING OF MISS CHARLOTTE ELY 

THE shock of these events proved too 
great for Miss Charlotte Ely, now in 
her seventy-sixth year, to endure. She 
did her utmost to relieve and comfort the people 
she loved, spending much of her time among 
the village refugees, of whom many had once 
been her pupils, listening to their stories and 
praying for them most wonderful prayers. But 
she suffered so intensely through her sympathy 
with them that body and mind weakened under 
the strain ; she sank into a state of unconscious- 
ness at last, from which she rallied only once or 
twice, and on July 11th she passed beyond all 
care and sorrow. 

Charlotte and Mary Ely, daughters of an 
American clergyman and a gifted English 
mother, were born in America and spent their 
childhood in Philadelphia. Early orphaned, 
they were given a home and a very unusual edu- 
cation for those days by their uncle, Ezra S. 

74 





Charlotte E. El> 



Alzina Churchill Knapp 




Mary A. C. Ely 



Georgc Perkins Kiiapp 



THE PASSING OF MISS CHARLOTTE ELY 75 

Ely, of Buffalo. He sent them to Elmira Col- 
lege and to Mt. Holyoke Seminary, whence they 
graduated with the " war class " of *61, then 
sent them abroad. Charlotte studied music un- 
der famous masters in Heidelberg, both studied 
languages in Germany and France, visited Italy, 
where they met Garibaldi, and made the ac- 
quaintance of their mother's family in England. 

At the end of two years they returned to 
America. On the home-going steamer they be- 
came acquainted with Rev. and Mrs. George C. 
Knapp, from Turkey, and this proved to be a 
turning point in their lives, for their hearts were 
deeply touched by what Mrs. Knapp had to tell 
them of the narrow, meager, burdened lives of 
Oriental women and of the little school she had 
started for girls in Bitlis. Charlotte promised 
to find a teacher for this school, but before long 
she decided to be herself that teacher; her sister 
came independently to the same conclusion, and 
the two joined the Knapps on their return to 
Bitlis in 1868. 

From the first they were charmed with the 
romantic situation of that isolated mountain 
city and became so deeply in love with their 
work there that they could not be induced to 



76 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

leave it, though more than once Charlotte, 
noted for her executive and administrative abil- 
ity, v^as asked to become the head of much 
larger schools in (seemingly) more important 
missions. One v^inter she consented to take 
charge of the school in Van, but she could be 
torn av^ay from her Bitlis home, even for needed 
rest and change, only against her v^ill. In her 
forty-seven years of missionary life she re- 
turned to America but twice, and in 1915 had 
not had a furlough for eighteen years. A 
woman of private fortune, many friends, culti- 
vated tastes, love for the best in music, art, lit- 
erature, great capacity for enjoyment, she gave 
up without regret all that civilization offered 
her, buried herself in this remote corner of 
Kurdistan and devoted all her powers to the 
service of its people. 

The sisters developed Mrs. Knapp's school 
into ''The Mt. Holyoke Seminary of Bitlis.'* 
Girls from the most primitive, sordid village 
homes ; girls from homes of material prosperity 
but mental and spiritual vacuity; wild, ignorant 
girls who had worked like beasts of burden in 
the fields; girls bejewelled and petted whose 
outlook was early marriage to strangers of their 



THE PASSING OF MISS CHABLOTTE ELY 77 

parents' choosing, and responsibilities for which 
they were totally unfitted — these were taken in, 
trained to obedience, self-control, truth-telling, 
thrift and neatness, brought into intimate asso- 
ciation with these two wonderful women and 
surrounded with an atmosphere of love and 
prayer. Character was what the Elys were 
striving for; with infinite patience they hewed 
and chiselled till the rough shapeless marble 
took on form and beauty under their hands ; into 
those young lives they poured the rich treasures 
of their own hearts and minds and souls ; their 
graduates became noble women whose influence 
as teachers, wives and mothers civilized and 
Christianized the communities in which they 
lived. 

Mary Ely was no whit behind Charlotte in 
her self-forgetful devotion to her work, and to 
this she added a peculiar devotion to her sister. 
Hers was a more practical temperament; the 
financial management of the school and the 
charge of its domestic department fell to her 
share ; common sense characterized her, shrewd 
insight into character, a sincere humility, a 
tender love for the weak or suffering and espe- 
cially for little children. 



78 THE TEAGEDT OF BITLIS 

The efforts of the sisters were not confined 
to the Seminary. They toured the villages 
frequently, establishing and superintending 
secondary schools and organizing work for 
women everywhere. 

To all this was added the management of 
orphanages after the massacres of 1895-96. 
This meant more than feeding, clothing, train- 
ing and teaching the homeless waifs gathered 
in from the street; it meant providing for their 
future when they reached maturity, choosing 
good husbands for them, and seeing to it that 
they were well treated in their new homes. 
Many a betrothal was solemnized in the Elys' 
parlour; many a modest trousseau they pre- 
pared with motherly solicitude and truly femi- 
nine pleasure in the task. 

For a good many years after Mrs. Knapp's 
departure from Bitlis Miss Charlotte had the 
charge, also, of the boarding department of the 
boys' school. She was as successful in the 
management of boys as of girls, thoroughly 
understanding boy nature and skillful in deaHng 
with it, and many a capable and useful preacher, 
teacher, man of business, has affectionately 
acknowledged that the good in him he owed to 



THE PASSING OP MISS CHAELOTTE ELY 79 

Mire-Varzhoohee*s (Mother-Teacher's) care 
and guidance. 

She planned her school buildings and super- 
vised their erection; minutely supervised the 
work of carpenters, masons, gardeners, etc., in 
her employ, teaching them new methods and 
the accuracy foreign to the Oriental mind. 
Hers was a many sided personality; contrasted 
with her great strength of character and almost 
masculine abilities were peculiar weaknesses 
due to an extremely nervous, intense, sensitive 
temperament. The fear of high winds, thunder- 
storms and earthquakes was an acute torment 
all her life, and every time she crossed the ocean 
she was almost beside herself with terror 
throughout the voyage. Yet she continued to 
live where earthquakes were of common occur- 
rence and where she was separated by that 
dreaded ocean from her early home and friends 
and relatives, because she loved her work witK 
all her heart and soul. 

In her wonderful memory was stored not 
only the names of all her boys and girls, of her 
neighbours and of the members of the Protes- 
tant community, but also an immense amount 
of detail concerning their characters and per- 



80 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

sonalities, their relationships and the main 
events in their Hves. 

Both sisters identified themselves wholly with 
the interests of their people and possessed their 
unbounded confidence and affection. Moslems 
as well as Christians trusted and revered 
them. 

Mary Ely fell ill in the fall of 1912. Dr. 
Ussher, hastily summoned from Van, pro- 
nounced her trouble heart disease, advised a 
lower altitude, and took her to Mardin, where 
she spent the winter under the care of Dr. 
Thom. At first she improved in health, but 
later grew worse and sea-level and the care of a 
specialist seemed necessary. She would allow 
no one to inform Charlotte of her condition, but 
Miss Uline, one of her associates at Bitlis, 
obliged at this time (April) to go to Beirut on 
business, joined her at Mardin and the two 
travelled together to the sea-coast. 

Arrived in Beirut, Mary Ely sank rapidly. 
The habit of sparing her idolized sister all 
possible anxiety persisted to the last. She sent 
word that she was comfortable and well cared 
for and that Charlotte was on no account to 
come to her. She would not permit physicians 



THE PASSING OF MISS CHARLOTTE ELY 81 

and nurses to telegraph the whole truth. On 
May 5, 1913, she peacefully fell asleep in the 
arms of the beloved young friend who had most 
tenderly cared for her during those last days 
of weakness and pain. 

Very bravely did Miss Charlotte bear her loss 
and loneliness, but half her life seemed gone. 

And now that her spirit had taken flight her 
pupils dressed her in the gown she had worn 
at her graduation from Mt. Holyoke and she 
was laid to rest in the garden she had tended 
for many years. Only a few Armenians were 
allowed to attend the funeral service. After- 
wards one of the teachers said, " To think 
that she who had taught us so many lovely 
songs should be laid away without one song 
from her Armenian girls, and that she who 
had given her life to the Armenian people 
should have to be carried to her grave by 
strange Turkish soldiers ! " 

Yet this very end, strange and sad as it seems, 
significantly sealed the renunciations of her 
lifetime. And who can doubt that she was 
greeted in the new life by the " new song ** on 
the lips of her Armenian girls, gone before her 
up " the steep ascent of Heaven through peril, 
toil and pain " ? 



XI 

AFTER THE RUSSIAN RETREAT 

WHEN they had been waiting hourly 
for word that the Governor and the 
few remaining officers were leaving, 
the Americans had got everything in readiness 
to barricade their buildings against an attack 
by Kurds. A young Armenian who came to 
them disguised as a woman was allowed to stay 
on condition he deliver up his firearms. He 
was also forbidden to enter the girls' school. 

Shortly after the retreat of the Russians and 
while the Turks were returning to the city two 
mounted gendarmes rode into the school prem- 
ises. Mr. Knapp asked them what they wanted. 

" That is our business." 

" These are American premises and you have 
no right to come in this way without an order.** 

"You are the man we want; you come 
with us." 

They drew their guns to force him to accom- 

82 



AFTEE THE EUSSIAN EETEEAT 83 

pany them. Mr. Knapp carried no arms: it 
will be remembered that the Armenian men ad- 
mitted to the premises early in June had been 
asked to give up their arms and he would not 
assume a privilege refused to them. Just out- 
side the school gate they encountered a soldier 
who protested against their action and while the 
controversy was on Mr. Knapp left them and 
went on to the Ely residence. 

The incident seemed significant in the light 
of an experience of his following the massacres 
of 1896 (see Chapter XIV), and he told Miss 
Shane there was a possibility of his being 
obliged to leave. 

A few days later officers came and asked him 
to accompany them to a neighbouring house 
as they had an official communication to make 
to him, and they threatened to use force if he 
did not immediately accede to their request. 
Miss McLaren, at that time nursing Sister 
Martha, who was ill with typhus, heard of this 
and made up her mind to go with him. 

" Escorted to a room where there were sev- 
eral civil and military officials, we were given 
the 'highest seats in the synagogue.* The 
spokesman as I remember was the chief of 



84 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

police, and he began by telling us that as for- 
eigners living in Turkish territory we were the 
honoured guests of the Ottoman Government 
and as such entitled to all the protection they 
could provide. Bitlis was in the war zone and 
therefore we must move to safer quarters. It 
was then four o'clock in the afternoon, and we 
were to be ready to leave at seven the next 
morning. Miss Shane was to go also. In vain 
I pleaded for permission to remain as long as 
Sister Martha lived. No, they had hospitals 
and she could be cared for in one of them. In- 
dignation and wrath increased as I listened, and 
then I gave them my opinion of Turkish grati- 
tude that would permit them to treat thus 
lightly the care of one who was dying because 
of what she had done for their soldiers. They 
looked at me in amazement (perhaps in amuse- 
ment) but repeated that I could not stay. As 
there seemed nothing further to be said or done, 
I went back to my patient, feeling sure that I 
would stay with her until the end, but not know- 
ing how it was to be brought about." 

The officers told Mr. Knapp that they wished 
to look over the premises and see how many 
people were still there. The persecution of 



AFTER THE RUSSIAN RETREAT 85 

defenseless women and children had been re- 
sumed immediately on the return of the Turks 
and gendarmes had come to take away those 
who, when the city had been practically evacu- 
ated, had come to the American premises for 
protection from the plundering Kurds (see 
Chapter IX). Word was sent Miss Shane that 
those who had been with her in the school from 
the first (the sixty or seventy who had been 
listed) would not be molested. Unable to re- 
main quietly in bed, however, in this critical 
situation. Miss Shane dressed hurriedly and 
went across the hall to where the women and 
girls were congregated. Mr. Knapp, down- 
stairs, was urging the gendarmes to leave the 
women where they were, but they declared they 
were under orders and must take them. 

Suddenly a shot rang out; Mr. Knapp and 
two gendarmes ran up into the hall but finding 
all quiet on the second floor went below and dis- 
covered that the shot had been fired from a 
window in the kitchen. Some of the women 
upon the arrival of the gendarmes had taken 
into the schoolhouse the young man who had 
come to the premises a week earlier disguised 
as a woman; he had somehow succeeded in 



86 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

securing a gun, had concealed himself and, 
thinking perhaps that a thorough search would 
be made, had aimed at and wounded a soldier. 
He must have been half-crazed with fear or he 
would have known that such a foolhardy action 
could only insure his own capture and would 
endanger the safety of all the rest. 

The Turks, fearfully enraged, surrounded 
Mr. Knapp in the small entry leading to the 
kitchen, levelling their guns at him. Miss 
Shane, hearing from the women that he was in 
great danger, made her way down-stairs, cling- 
ing to the rail. Mr. Knapp, on seeing her, called 
to her to go back, adding that they were in- 
sisting on his entering the kitchen to disarm the 
Armenian. One of the gendarmes ordered her 
away. She went on. A policeman who seemed 
to be in command then motioned her away; 
when she refused to go he raised his gun to 
strike her, his face distorted with wrath. 
Realizing the uselessness of attempting to op- 
pose him further, she turned to go up-stairs. 
He barred the way, speaking rapidly in Turkish, 
not a word of which could she understand, then 
called a common soldier and indicated that she 
was to follow him. She learned later that she 



AFTEE THE EUSSIAN EETEEAT 87 

was thus sent away because they intended to 
burn the building to prevent the escape of the 
Armenian. 

As Mr. Knapp approached the kitchen door 
another shot rang out; entering, he found the 
young man dead by his own hand. 

Meanwhile Miss Shane was taken to a large 
house across the way which was being used as a 
hospital. The principal of the girls' school 
joined her before she reached the gate, and 
when Miss Shane sank weak and exhausted into 
a chair placed for her in one of the hallways, she 
sat beside her supporting her, and began to 
scold vigorously the Turks who occasionally 
passed them, because Miss Shane had been 
forced to leave the schoolhouse in her weakened 
condition. 

The two women were allowed to remain in 
this hallway safe and unmolested, as Turks not 
acting under government orders did not as a 
rule concern themselves with whatever might 
be going on. Indeed, in many instances they 
had ere this shown regret that such things must 
be. The women and girls in the schoolhouse 
were brought over to this hospital; later, word 
was sent to Miss Shane that she might go back 



88 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

to the schoolhouse, for the building would not be 
burned now that the young Armenian was dead. 
Meanwhile several of the officers had gone 
immediately after the shooting incident to Miss 
McLaren in the Ely house. 

" I had heard the shot and had seen the body 
being dragged away, but knew nothing further. 
The enraged men proceeded to enlighten me by 
saying that Mr. Knapp had hidden that man 
purposely to shoot one of them. I tried to con- 
vince them that this was not true, giving as 
proofs the facts that we had refused to allow 
armed men on the premises, and that Mr. Knapp 
had disarmed several. This statement, instead 
of establishing our innocence, had the opposite 
effect. 

" * Where are the arms that he took? ' 
" * They are locked up in his safe.' 
" ' Why did he not turn them over to us at 
once? See, he keeps arms on the American 
compound ! We must have them at once,* and 
they arose to go. 

" I did not see fit to tell them that under the 
couch on which some of them had been sitting 
there were two guns with ammunition, put there 
for use in case of an attack by Kurds if the gov- 



AFTER THE RUSSIAN RETREAT 89 

ernment had been obliged to leave the city. 
While they were gone, however, I had the guns 
taken out and put in a less suspicious place, 
ready to be handed over on demand. On their 
return all looked as if they had unearthed a 
great plot against the government and had 
escaped a great danger. I helped them to 
search our house for weapons and then renewed 
my plea that I be allowed to remain, saying that 
they might do with me what they liked after 
Sister Martha was gone. 

" Referring again to what they chose to call 
Mr. Knapp's perfidy, they said I must go. Just 
at that time the superintendent of the hospitals, 
Mustifa Bey, walked in and asked what the 
trouble was. On being told he pointed to me 
and asked, * Is she going too? I need her in 
my hospital. She does not belong to Bitlis, but 
came over from Van with us and I cannot run 
my hospital without her.' Neither he nor I be- 
lieved this last, but it put matters in a new 
light, and after a little whispered consultation 
it was decided that I might remain. The doctor 
also put in a word for Miss Shane and per- 
mission was given her to remain until her 
temperature came down to normal." 



90 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

The gendarmes and soldiers withdrew from 
the premises with the exception of the usual 
guard. There was no sleep for any of the 
Americans that night. The next morning it 
was found that the women and girls in the house 
across the way had been left unmolested, but 
it was still reported that they would be taken 
from the city later in the day. Permission was 
given Miss Shane to see them. 

" Supported by two of our women, I made 
my way across the street and to the part of the 
building where they were being held. The 
pastor's wife rushed into the room, sank at my 
feet and buried her face in my lap. The others 
crowded about me. I told them that I had sent 
word to Mustifa Bey, the superintendent of hos- 
pitals, to intercede for them. 

" Those were sad moments for all of us as we 
knew what the future might hold in store for 
them. For the most part they were calm and 
quiet, and most earnest were the prayers that 
went up as we knelt together. 

" I was allowed to remain only fifteen min- 
utes. Just before I left three soldiers came into 
the room and tried to persuade several of the 
girls to go with them to another room to do 



AFTEE THE EUSSIAN EETEEAT 91 

some work for them. The girls refused and the 
men did not insist. One young woman, urged 
more than the others, turned on the soldier and 
with fearless eyes full of scorn said, * You can 
kill me here but I will not go.' This was the 
spirit of the girls, shown on various occasions, 
and I was proud of them. 

" Up to this time I had been staying in the 
girls* school. But it seemed that Mr. Knapp 
would leave that day and as all our girls and 
women might be sent away at any time, he in- 
sisted that, owing to my weak condition, I 
should go back to the Ely residence. 

" In the evening Mustifa Bey came in to tell 
us that the girls would be allowed to stay. He 
said that the Governor expressed himself as be- 
ing sorry that matters had turned out as they 
had, that he had not intended my girls to be 
troubled in any way, but since the shooting on 
our premises investigation was likely to be 
made from Constantinople, and he could allow 
them to remain only on condition that they 
assist in the hospital. 

" Mr. Knapp was allowed to do his packing 
and no limit placed on the amount he could take 
with him. Monday afternoon he came in to 



92 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

give me the station books and advise me as to 
the managing of affairs after his departure. At 
ten o'clock he came in to say good-bye to us. 
He was very sad and depressed, more on ac- 
count of having to leave us alone in that critical 
situation than on his own account, although he 
was of the opinion that he would not be al- 
lowed to travel safely. For a long time he had 
been under intense strain, practically working 
alone. He seemed never to think of himself 
and had never wavered in his self-sacrificing 
devotion and service to those under his protec- 
tion. He was greatly troubled now because he 
had allowed the young man to come into the 
premises. But I reminded him that the re- 
sponsibility was not his only, nor was any one 
at fault. We could not foresee that the Rus- 
sians would retreat or that the Armenian would 
secure firearms and do the insane thing that he 
had done. 

" Before he left the house we had prayers to- 
gether. Some time past midnight I heard the 
soft tread of camels and horses in the street be- 
low, and knew that he was on his way — alone." 

And the two American women were left with 
their dying friend. 



XII 

SISTER MARTHA 

ONCE when Sister Martha had pleaded 
in vain for a sick boy that he might be 
allowed to remain in the compound un- 
til he recovered instead of being taken away 
from the city to his death — as she knew, a Turk- 
ish officer took her aside and said, " Why do 
you mix in this business? This is an American 
home and you are a German ; you may get into 
trouble ; keep away." 

Her reply was, " Even if I am a German, this 
is as much my business as the Americans' and I 
won't keep away as long as I think I can help 
the Armenians." 

The Turks talked with her freely about their 
treatment of the Armenians, expecting her to 
see the matter from their point of view because 
she was a German, and constantly reminded her 
that they were allies. They went so far as to 
say that Germany was responsible for the 
massacres and hardly a day passed that some 

93 



94 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

Turkish official did not step up to her, put his 
forefingers together and say, " We are brothers, 
we are allies." Such remarks seemed little 
short of sacrilege to her, for she believed the 
Kaiser incapable of doing wrong. 

" Oh ! " she would say to the Americans, " we 
love our Kaiser. He would not do such things." 

Later she evidently began to suspect, or had 
reason to believe, that Germany was responsible 
for the massacres, and this belief broke her 
heart. Physically she had suffered greatly for 
many months though she had never permitted 
her health to interfere with her work; mentally 
she now suffered even more keenly because of 
her sympathy with the Armenians and her love 
for her fatherland. The strain was too great 
for her to bear; she often said to Miss McLaren, 
" I want to go home. Not to my home in 
Konigsberg but to my Father's home." And 
every morning before going to her work she 
would sing the hymn, " Ich mochte Heim." 

Her desire was soon fulfilled. She fell ill with 
typhus and from the first there seemed to be no 
chance of her recovery. In her delirium she 
would scream " Herrlichkeit! " then add in a 
lower voice, "Ja Vater, du weiz." Miss Mc- 



SISTER MARTHA 95 

Laren nursed her throughout her illness and 
wrote at her dictation little loving messages to 
her friends and relatives. After ten days of in- 
tense suffering she entered her " Father's 
Home " on July 29, 1915. 

There was no one in the city, Moslem or 
Christian, who could make even a rough box for 
a coffin, so Miss McLaren took a bier used for 
carrying Turkish soldiers to the grave, cleansed 
it, lined it and made it more fit for her purpose. 
She conducted the burial service which Miss 
Shane, two doctors and a few Armenian women 
and girls attended. 

No notice was taken by the Turkish Govern- 
ment of Sister Martha's death, although she had 
given her life for its soldiers. A few weeks 
later the Vali asked Miss McLaren who Sister 
Martha was, as an inquiry about her had come 
from the German ambassador. Miss McLaren 
had good reason to believe that he never took 
the trouble to answer this inquiry.* 
*See Chapter XV. 



XIII 

THE PIONEER PARENTS OF GEORGE 
PERKINS KNAPP 

ONE October morning in 1855 a newly 
married couple set out from New Eng- 
land on what proved a unique wedding 
journey. They were to sail across the Atlantic 
and the Mediterranean, but they had no sooner 
left port than a terrific storm arose; the first 
mate was washed overboard; the voyage lasted 
so much longer than expected that before its 
end the water and food supply was exhausted; 
crew and passengers secured drinking water by 
setting vessels out on deck to catch the rain. 
Worst of all, the captain was drunk when the 
ship reached the ^gean Sea and there was no 
other officer capable of navigating the ship 
through the dangerous archipelago. 

There were seven missionaries on board : the 

newly married pair, George Gushing Knapp and 

96 



THE PARENTS OF GEORGE P. KNAPP 97 

his wife Alzina Churchill Knapp, Rev. and Mrs. 
Edward Aiken, Rev. and Mrs. O. P. Allen and 
Dr. H. B, Haskell. The four men were fresh 
from theological seminary or medical school 
and had never set foot on a sailing vessel be- 
fore, but they were equal to the emergency: 
locking the drunken captain into his cabin they 
took the chart, studied it, and navigated the 
ship successfully to port. 

At Smyrna the seven travelling companions 
separated. Dr. Haskell carried on medical 
work in Mosul for a while ; the wife ^ he married 
two years later, who visited Bitlis and became 
a warm friend of the Knapps, is still living. Mr, 
and Mrs. Aiken joined the mission at Beirut 
and Mr. and Mrs. Allen were stationed at Har- 
poot and a son and a daughter of theirs also 
became missionaries in Turkey. Mr. Allen, 
the last survivor of this little group, died in 
Constantinople in the spring of 1918. 

Mr. and Mrs. Knapp joined what was then 
called the Assyrian Mission, and were stationed 
in Diarbekir with Rev. and Mrs. Augustus 
Walker and Dr. and Mrs. David O. Nutting. 
In 1858, however, they begged to be permitted 
* Mrs. S. B. Tibbals of New Haven. 



98 THE TRAGEDY OP BITLIS 

to establish a station in a city whose need had 
greatly appealed to them during a summer spent 
there away from the great heat of the Diarbekir 
plain. 

BitHs is situated on a plateau so high and so 
abrupt that in six hours of horseback travel one 
can pass from a region of heavy winter snows 
to a land of perpetual summer. It is the " door 
between highlands and lowlands," as the valley 
of the Bitlis River is the avenue of communica- 
tion between the plateaus of the northeast and 
east and the Mesopotamian plains. 

The houses are built of large hewn blocks of 
a sort of lava which is silvery gray and soft 
enough to be cut with a knife when fresh from 
the quarry, but turns hard and brown after long 
exposure to the weather. Earthquakes have 
been very frequent; in 1906 a series of earth- 
quakes of unusual severity did much damage in 
the villages of the region, but the houses of 
Bitlis with their three-foot-thick stone walls 
were injured in but few cases. Near the city 
is an extinct volcano, Nimroud Dagh, which has 
a crater second in size only to Crater Lake, 
Oregon. 

Mr. Knapp immediately started a class for 



THE PARENTS OF GEORGE P. KNAPP 99 

young men which met every evening at his 
home. Mrs. Knapp taught daily a class of girls 
and women. Mr. Trowbridge was their asso- 
ciate the first winter; the next they were left 
alone. The opposition of the jealous, ignorant 
Gregorian priesthood was very severe at first 
and at one time a mob set upon Mr. Knapp and 
his helpers in the market-place. Dr. and Mrs. 
Nutting were with them for a while in 1860 and 
that summer the two men explored a field which 
included two hundred towns and villages, of 
which one hundred and twenty-eight were 
Armenian. But this explored region was less 
than half of the territory, fifteen hundred square 
miles in area, belonging to Bitlis " station " and 
the missionaries in Bitlis must evangelize this 
territory if it was to be evangelized at all. 
Rev. and Mrs. Lysander T. Burbank joined 
them in 1861 and remained nine years. After 
their departure the Knapps and the Misses Ely, 
whom they had brought back with them on 
their return from furlough in 1868, were the 
only missionaries in this great field for fourteen 
years. 

The work was a pioneer work indeed. The 
people were amazingly ignorant and geographic- 



100 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

ally and chronologically remote from civiliza- 
tion. There were no railroads in Kurdistan ; no 
post horses, even, came to Bitlis in the sixties, 
and the Americans had to send a man once a 
month to Erzerum for their mail. People lived 
and laboured as their ancestors had done before 
them for hundreds of years. Women were 
despised, overworked, led lives of dreary, slavish 
subjection. The almost incredible ignorance of 
mothers, the absence of any medical help what- 
soever, the lack of sanitation, were the causes 
of a seventy-five per cent infant mortality and 
an immense amount of physical suffering, de- 
formity and blindness. 

The American missionaries educated girls as 
well as boys — an unheard of, and at first bitterly 
opposed, experiment. They sought first of all 
to build up strong helpful Christian characters. 
Knowledge, a wider outlook, new ideals, new 
ambitions, the personal influence and example 
of these American teachers, gradually raised the 
whole level of civilization in the region. Homes 
like those of Pastor Khachig and his wife, 
Kevork Effendi's and Deegeen Heghene's — 
cultured, happy, love-filled homes; characters 
like theirs that bore triumphantly the supreme 



THE PARENTS OF GEORGE P. KNAPP 101 

test at the last, were the bright flowering of this 
new civilization. 

For this work Mr. and Mrs. Knapp were pe- 
culiarly fitted : the pioneer blood of six genera- 
tions of New England ancestry ran in their 
veins; theirs was the resourcefulness, ambition 
and " grit *' that seems the heritage of those 
born and bred on New England farms; and 
theirs a whole-hearted, enthusiastic devotion to 
the service of their Master. 

Mr. Knapp had the true Yankee ingenuity, 
inventiveness and mechanical ability. He taught 
his pupils to make the furniture of their school- 
room, and helped them pay their way with the 
work of their hands. He introduced the use of 
window-glass, and dark germ-breeding dwell- 
ings were thus opened to the purifying sunlight. 
He planted a garden, raising in it many vege- 
tables unknown to that region, two of which, 
the potato and tomato, became staple products 
and articles of diet thereafter. He was not a 
physician, but the sick constantly appealed to 
him for relief and he and his wife dispensed 
simple remedies with common sense advice con- 
cerning the care of the sick and of little children. 

A good boys' school, a girls' seminary, a 



102 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

strong evangelical church and community de- 
veloped in a comparatively short time from very 
modest beginnings. Schools and preaching 
centers were established in the surrounding vil- 
lages until there were twenty-eight in the 
vilayet from which came girls and boys pre- 
pared for entrance into the two boarding-schools 
in Bitlis and from which radiated enlightenment 
and helpful influence to all parts of the province. 

The Havedorig region was a remarkable ex- 
ample of the changes wrought by these centers. 
Its inhabitants when Mr. Knapp first visited 
them were bloodthirsty, thievish brigands; fif- 
teen years later the church at Havedorig was 
working a reform among the hundred villages 
of Moush plain, and the people were gradually 
becoming peaceful, law-abiding, prosperous and 
intelligent. 

The unusual experiences of the missionaries 
both at home and while travelling and touring 
the villages would fill a volume. One of Mr. 
Knapp's journeys was a voyage down the Tigris 
River to Mosul on a raft made of wood resting 
on over a hundred inflated goat-skins. At night 
the travellers would anchor the raft near some 
village. Passing through the narrows between 




Home lite in an Armenian village 




Life in an Armenian refngee camp — Port Said 



THE PAEENTS OF GEOEGE P. KNAPP 103 

high rocky bluffs they were shot at by robber 
Kurds. 

During another journey he and his com- 
panion, Dr. George C. Raynolds of Van, were 
attacked and robbed by the noted brigand, 
Mousa Bey. 

When the Russo-Turkish war broke out Mr. 
Knapp was taking his oldest son George to 
Constantinople to send him thence to America. 
He had to consign the boy to the care of the 
captain of a Black Sea steamer and hasten back 
to his other children and the three American 
ladies, left alone in Bitlis. Troops from Bagdad 
on their way to the front near Erzerum passed 
through the city; several thousand Kurdish 
Volunteers from the South plundered the 
Armenians of Bitlis, outraging and killing many ; 
they said they had come north not to fight but 
to plunder. Many Armenians brought their 
most cherished possessions to Mr. Knapp for 
safe keeping. His presence restrained these 
Kurds to an appreciable extent. 

War was followed by terrible famine and the 
missionaries opened a soup kitchen for the 
destitute. Among those who came to this soup 
kitchen for relief was a high-spirited, handsome 



104 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

boy from the highlands of Sassun who later 
worked his way through the mission school and 
theological seminary, married a graduate of the 
Mt. Holyoke Seminary of BitHs, was for a time 
a preacher and teacher in the villages, and finally 
became pastor of the church in Bitlis. This was 
Khachig Vartanian, the story of whose martyr- 
dom and that of his wife has been told in the 
preceding chapters. 

At the time this young lad first entered 
Bitlis the pastor of its Protestant Church was 
Rev. Simon Tavitian, who was another remark- 
able product of the mountain fastnesses of 
Sassun, a man of originaHty of character, ex- 
traordinary learning and great practical ability — 
a revered leader of his people. 

Except for two years, 1902-1904, when Dr. 
Herbert Underwood was stationed there, never 
was there an American, and seldom a native, 
physician in Bitlis, and this lack was the cause 
of many hard experiences. At one time when 
Mrs. Knapp was dangerously ill her husband 
consulted by telegraph with Dr. Parmelee in 
Erzerum and followed his directions success- 
fully. After Dr. C. D. Ussher went to Van in 
1899 he considered himself responsible for the 



THE PAEENTS OF GEOBGE P. KNAPP 105 

Bitlis station as well, and often crossed the lake 
or made the hard four-days' journey over the 
mountains, to minister to its missionaries in 
their need. But this was after Mr. and Mrs. 
Knapp's time. 

Sixteen years elapsed between Mr. Knapp's 
first and second furlough. In 1884 he was re- 
leased for greatly needed rest by the transfer 
of Rev. Royal M. Cole and his wife from 
Erzerum to Bitlis, where they remained until 
1907. During the Russo-Turkish war, Mr. Cole 
had cared very efHciently for the wounded sol- 
diers in Erzerum. This city was one of the 
strategic points of the war and was taken by 
the Russians in 1878. 

In 1890 Mr. Knapp's own son George became 
his associate in the work at Bitlis and three 
years later a daughter also. His last days were 
passed among the people he had laboured for; 
he was spared the terrible grief of witness- 
ing the massacres of 1895-96, for he died on 
March 12, 1895. 

The missionaries had been bitterly opposed 
by the Gregorian priesthood at the first. But 
now the Gregorians requested that Mr. Knapp's 
grave should be within their church and begged 



106 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

the privilege of taking a share in the burial 
services. These vi^ere exceedingly impressive 
and deeply significant of the changes brought 
about in the space of one man's lifetime, largely 
through the quiet influence of his own per- 
sonality. 

George Gushing Knapp's preeminent gift was 
the gift of inspiring confidence and affection. 
His people beHeved absolutely in his sincerity, 
his interest in them, his desire to help them, 
his devotion to the Master he served. He won 
the respect and admiration of those who were 
hostile to his religion, who were incapable of 
understanding his motives. One of his staunch- 
est friends was a Kurdish neighbour, a man of 
position and influence, whose loyalty was in 
war and massacre put severely to the test and 
did not fail. 

His was never the critical censorious spirit 
that mars so many forceful personalities; his 
never the tongue to wound with cruel thrust 
like that of a rapier. He would live at peace 
with all men. But underneath all his gentle- 
ness was the granite of his native state: he 
could never be moved by physical danger or the 
fear of men where principle was at stake. 



THE PAEENTS OF GEOEGE P. KNAPP 107 

Mrs. Knapp was a very important factor in 
the success of the mission at Bitlis. In her girl- 
hood she had had an intense craving for knowl- 
edge, and secured with much hard work an 
education for herself and later for two younger 
sisters. She became assistant principal of 
Castleton Seminary, having charge of its girl 
students and governing them with love and 
sympathetic understanding. 

After she had passed over to the Misses Ely 
the school for girls she had estabHshed in Bitlis, 
she gave much of her time to the boys* school, 
always teaching a number of classes and having 
full charge of the boarding department. She 
mothered the boys far from their own village 
homes, looking after their clothing, giving them 
work with which to pay their way, and super- 
vising their discipline. No boy so stubborn and 
insubordinate but could be melted and subdued 
by an interview with " Khanum." She had a 
remarkable gift for dealing with people, for 
calming their angry passions and making them 
" see reason," obey the dictates of common 
sense and good judgment and forget their 
prejudices and animosities. Throughout her 
life she was constantly called upon to settle 



108 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

quarrels and adjust difficulties, and many a 
delicate and complicated situation did she 
handle with the skill of a born diplomat. 

Besides her school work she had the teaching 
of her own children and the cares of house- 
keeping, A notable cook herself, she trained 
successive Armenian women to something ap- 
proaching her own perfection in that line, and 
her hospitable home was an oasis in the desert 
of miserable Oriental khans for the infrequent 
European travellers through that region. 

Her busy days, with their great number and 
variety of regular tasks which left not a moment 
unoccupied, were further filled — to overflow- 
ing — by incessant interruptions: the visits of 
Turkish men — wives of high officials — the visits 
of families of wealth and influence, the appeals 
of all sorts and conditions of men and women 
for advice, comfort, or assistance. " Khanum " 
meant one woman and no other to the people of 
Bitlis: an American woman with a vivid, force- 
ful personality radiating sunny cheer and stimu- 
lating sympathy, strong, true, intensely loving, 
Christlike. 

A hot summer spent in an Oriental town 
utterly lacking in sanitation seriously injures 



THE PARENTS OF GEORGE P. KNAPP 109 

the health of children of Occidental parentage. 
So Mrs. Knapp moved her family every year 
to a mountain three miles from the city. There 
was a small Armenian village here; its tiny 
fields of cabbage and turnips, millet, wheat and 
clover, rose one above another on terraces like 
a green flight of stairs. On two terraces above 
the highest of these camped the missionaries in 
tents and dug-outs, and here Mrs. Knapp planted 
a garden and tended it with never-failing de- 
light, reliving in memory the childhood days 
spent on her father's Vermont farm. 

The Elys brought their school up here for the 
summer term each year — no great undertaking 
since desks, chairs, tables and bedsteads did 
not have to be moved also. The girls from 
secluded Oriental homes revelled in the un- 
wonted physical freedom and simple pleasures 
of this outdoor life. Often after the studies and 
household tasks of the day, they would play 
" Tag " and " Fox and Geese " and many an- 
other old-fashioned game on the terrace in the 
light of a full moon. 

A small river almost encircled the mountain 
at its base ; a waterfall in a ravine opposite filled 
the air with its mild musical thunder; a brook 



110 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

rushed down past the camp to water the fields 
of the village whose ant-hill-like houses in their 
setting of green trees were just visible from 
the edge of the Knapp terrace. 

It was a place absolutely shut in by moun- 
tains and the world shut out — " a haunt of 
ancient peace." The word " home " has always 
brought instantly the picture of this quiet re- 
treat before the inner eye of one, at least, whose 
childhood summers were spent there. 

But now the picture is as instantly followed 
by the stabbing reminder that Cindian also 
became in 1915 the scene of hideous carnage; 
that those simple villagers were then butchered; 
that many of the girlish playmates of long ago 
have as women endured torture, shame and 
death. 

The death of her husband, the massacre of 
1895, the deportation of her son, events which 
followed each other within a year, almost 
crushed Mrs. Knapp's brave spirit. She re- 
turned to America in 1896. Here she found 
new service awaiting her, service in behalf of 
those she loved, and to it she gave herself un- 
stintedly, self-sacrificingly, year after year. 

Always keenly interested in affairs, keeping 



THE PABENTS OP GEOEGE P. KNAPP 111 

in close touch with scores of old friends in all 
parts of the world, constantly making devoted 
new friends, youthful in her enthusiasms, phys- 
ically active, she lived a full life to the very end. 
Her grave lies under the shadow of the 
mighty Rockies, the grave of her husband un- 
der the shadow of the Taurus Mountains, half 
the width of the world away. The work they 
estabhshed has been destroyed — the people they 
loved and laboured for have been nearly an- 
nihilated, the son who most closely followed in 
their footsteps has died a martyr's death. But 
their spirit can never die out of the world; in 
the new Turkey, in the new Bitlis, it will live 
on. The little town, reconstructed by the sur- 
viving Armenians who call it home, and by the 
Americans helping them, will become the center 
of a work greater than the past has ever known 
that will civilize and Christianize the whole of 
Kurdistan. 



XIV 

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN 

GEORGE PERKINS KNAPPinaunique 
sense laid down his life for his friends, 
the Armenians. He died because he 
loved them, literally. This is the firm convic- 
tion of those who know most about the circum- 
stances of his last days. 

With such a parentage as his, with a child- 
hood and early boyhood spent in Bitlis, his only 
playmates and schoolmates — aside from brother 
and sisters — Armenian lads, it was perhaps not 
to be wondered at that when he came to 
America at the age of fourteen, he resolved to 
return to Bitlis after completing his education. 
Boy though he was when that resolve was 
made, he never changed his mind but held to 
that single purpose throughout his school and 
college life. 

Working his way through Harvard he was 
graduated with the class of 1887 and entered 
Hartford Theological Seminary. During his 

112 



GEEATER LOVE HATH NO MAN 113 

Junior year at college he became engaged to 
Anna Jay Hunt, daughter of Addison A. and 
Clara E. Thomas Hunt of Barre, Massachusetts, 
who was graduated from Mt. Holyoke Seminary 
in 1886 and taught in Salt Lake City under the 
New West Educational Commission until their 
marriage in July, 1890. A few weeks after the 
wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Knapp set sail for 
Turkey. 

The people of Bitlis had a pleasant way of 
greeting new or returning missionaries; they 
would walk two or three miles out of the city to 
meet the travellers: the schoolboys and school- 
girls would line up on each side of the road, sing 
a song written for the occasion and present 
flowers, after which every one would press for- 
ward for a handshake and word of greeting. 

An unusually large concourse turned out to 
meet " Mr. George " and his young wife. 
Middle-aged or old men who had known him 
as a boy, young men who had been his child- 
hood playmates, were won to renewed and 
deeper affection by his quick recognition of old 
friends in spite of changes wrought by the inter- 
vening years, and by his ready use of the lan- 
guage he had not allowed himself to forget. 



114 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

Such things mean more to Orientals than to 
other people; his deep and continued and sin- 
cere interest in individuals and in the race as a 
race wronged and oppressed, his sympathy, his 
appreciation of all that was admirable in 
Armenian character, customs, literature and re- 
ligion completed his conquest of their hearts. 

Four years after his coming something hap- 
pened that increased this affection almost to 
hero-worship. Petty disturbances in the Sassun 
highlands west of Bitlis were magnified by 
Tahsin Pasha, governor of the vilayet, into a 
" rebellion " which was " suppressed " by him 
with fiendish cruelty. Refugees escaping to 
Bitlis brought stories of fearful atrocities per- 
petrated in those remote fastnesses. Afire with 
indignation and horror, Mr. Knapp wrote an ac- 
count of what had happened and sent it to the 
London Times, Refugees escaped to Europe 
also and told their story there. 

A commission of investigation was sent to 
Moush, the town nearest the Sassun district. 
Although Mr. Knapp's name had not appeared 
in connection with the Times article, the un- 
looked-for publicity the affair had gained was 
ascribed to him by both Turks and Armenians. 



GEEATEE LOVE HATH NO MAN 115 

The latter — or rather some of the hot-headed 
young men among them — ^jubilant over the 
coming of the commission, were rather unwise 
in their demonstrations of gratitude and thus 
increased the newly aroused hostiUty towards 
him of the government officials. 

It was beHeved in Bitlis, at least, at that time, 
that Europe, pledged to secure good govern- 
ment for the Armenians, would now begin to 
fulfill her promises. The massacres of 1895-96 
proved how vain were these hopes. 

The massacre in Bitlis took place in October, 
1895. Many took refuge on the mission prem- 
ises and here a number of the victims were 
buried. The Turks showed their animosity to- 
wards Mr. Knapp by more than one attempt to 
shoot him. At the very first, a Turkish mob 
rushed towards his house but was checked and 
finally dispersed by the intervention of the 
Kurdish neighbour who had been his father's 
friend and his own. 

The massacres were represented by the Turk- 
ish Government as " uprisings " of the Armeni- 
ans and due to Armenian revolutionary agents. 
After the secret arrangement between Russia 
and Turkey, made when th^ fleets of the Powers 



116 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

had assembled in the Bay of Salonica, and 
the coercing of Turkey by a display of naval 
strength before Constantinople had almost been 
decided upon, it began to be " whispered " that 
the missionaries were at the back of the revo- 
lutionary agents and that upon them should fall 
the real blame for the blood shed by the Turks 
in " suppressing disorder." This was a plausible 
pretext for getting rid of them in order to make 
way for the priests of the Russian Church, as 
the first step in Russianizing the empire. The 
Sultan prepared an irade providing for their ex- 
pulsion. 

It was decided to begin with Mr. Knapp. He 
was openly charged with inciting the Armenians 
of Bitlis to revolt, and although Mr. Hampson, 
the British vice-consul who had been sent to 
Bitlis after the massacres, reported that these 
charges were absurd, Mr. Knapp was summoned 
before the criminal court. On telegraphing to 
the American minister for instructions, he was 
told not to obey the summons. But during a 
temporary absence of the British consul he was 
" invited " to leave the city and a large guard 
came to his house to escort him to the coast. 

Mr. Knapp went with them, believing that his 



GEEATER LOVE HATH NO MAN 117 

helpless people would be punished for resistance 
on his part. The Vali at Aleppo detained him 
five days trying to make him sign an agree- 
ment not to return to Bitlis under any circum- 
stances. He steadily refused to sign, on the 
ground that the charges brought against him 
were entirely unfounded, and he was finally al- 
lowed to proceed, still treated as a prisoner, to 
Alexandretta. 

Fortunately, Mr. John W. Riddle was then 
the United States charge d'affaires at Constan- 
tinople, and took up the matter vigorously, aided 
and supported by Sir Philip Currie, the British 
ambassador. The Turkish Government prom- 
ised to have the missionary delivered to the 
American consul at Alexandretta on his arrival 
there but the consul wired Mr. Riddle on April 
23rd that the Alexandretta authorities had re- 
fused to give up Mr. Knapp and intended to 
expel him from Turkish territory by compelling 
him to embark on a steamer saiHng for Europe 
April 24th. Mr. Riddle made energetic repre- 
sentation to the Turkish Government demand- 
ing that the latter respect its engagements, and 
in order to give emphasis to his remarks he tele- 
graphed to the commander of the United States 



118 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

cruiser, Marblehead, anchored at Mersina, to go 
to Alexandretta and place the cruiser at the 
disposal of the consul at that port. The Porte 
no sooner became aware of this telegram than 
orders were sent to Alexandretta for the release 
of Mr. Knapp. 

The next step should have been to insist on 
Mr. Knapp*s rights as an American citizen, to 
treat the charges brought against him as ab- 
surd, and to demand that he be permitted to 
return at once to his mission. Such action was 
taken by Sir Philip Currie in the case of Rev. 
F. W. MacCallum, who was also deported from 
his station some months later, but who was a 
British subject, a Canadian. The Porte imme- 
diately complied with the ambassador's de- 
mands. The cases of these two missionaries 
were object lessons in the difference between 
the policies of England and of the United States 
with respect to the status of their citizens 
abroad.* Dr. MacCallum returned immediately 
to his station ; Mr. Knapp waited in Constanti- 
nople for a " trial," but in vain. 

* These cases, however, put an end to the plan for the 
general expulsion of missionaries. The irade referred to 
was never made public. 



GEEATER LOVE HATH NO MAN 119 

Finally he gave up the attempt to secure the 
trial and came to America, his wife and children 
and mother, who had left Bitlis soon after his 
deportation, having preceded him hither. For 
two years he worked hard to secure funds in 
this country for the care of thousands of Arme- 
nian orphans left desolate by the massacres. 

In 1899 he returned to Turkey, going to Har- 
poot to take charge of fifteen hundred of these 
orphans. The mission here had suffered 
severely during the massacres; most of its 
buildings were in ruins. The orphans were 
scattered here and there where room could be 
found for them ; Mr. Knapp bought land ad- 
joining the mission premises, put up a building 
suitable for a home for the girls, centralized 
the preparation of food as an economical 
measure, and established a bakery which be- 
came a source of revenue as well as a saving of 
expense. The whole orphanage work was en- 
larged and splendidly organized. Rev. Thomas 
C. Richards, in an article published in The Con- 
gregationalist for December 9, 1915, gives some 
details concerning it: 

" His perfect mastery of the language and 
intimate knowledge of Armenian ideals and 



120 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

ideas made him just the man for the place. He 
secured financial help for the work in Eng- 
land and Switzerland and from Armenians in 
America who had great confidence in him. 

" His aim was to help these orphans to help 
themselves. The boys were all taught some 
trade, tailoring, shoemaking, carpentering, and 
the like. The girls, besides learning to do all 
kinds of domestic work, were taught to weave 
ginghams and make thread lace. The late 
George C. Williams, president of the Chemical 
National Bank of New York, believed in Mr. 
Knapp and his work so much that he gave the 
funds to start a plant for the making of Oriental 
rugs. In the State Department at Washington 
is a magnificent specimen of the work accom- 
plished. It is a double-faced silk rug in the 
form of an American flag, twelve feet by four, 
representing two years' work if done by one 
individual. On the flag is this inscription, 
' Presented in gratitude to the United States 
Government by the Armenian Orphans of Har- 
poot, Turkey.' 

" Much more might be written of the agri- 
cultural training, of the silk culture, of the mills 
and bakery that could turn the wheat into 



GEEATER LOYE HATH NO MAN 121 

bread, but enough has been shown of this one 
venture and reHef measure to remind one of 
Cyrus Hamlin and his resourcefulness. 

" In 1908 a massacre occurred at Adana and 
Minot Rogers was killed. At that time, by 
grape-vine telegraphy, news of an impending 
massacre came to Harpoot. Mr. Knapp's two 
daughters had gone to Ichme, a village five or 
six hours away, with a native Armenian pas- 
tor's family to spend their spring vacation. 
Convinced of the danger, George Knapp went 
to the VaH of Harpoot and found the most 
prominent Armenians in the city there on a 
like errand. The Governor pooh-poohed the 
idea of any danger; besides, he had sent four 
soldiers out there for protection. Finding the 
missionary determined to go that night to the 
village where his daughters were, the Vali gave 
him an escort of twenty soldiers and one officer. 
As day broke they reached Ichme to find the 
children and village safe. 

*'Why didn't you do it before? You can't, 
now the * Hat-wearer ' is come," said one of the 
soldiers to the Moslems, not realizing how well 
the missionary understood Turkish. 

" The Kurds were massed in a ravine back of 



1?2 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

the town. Another company were in the 
mosque. They had planned just as deadly and 
brutal work as actually happened at Adana, but 
were forestalled. The four soldiers sent the 
day before arrived much later in the day. 

" Now, hardest of all, this father had to go 
back in a few hours to his post at Harpoot, for 
no one could foretell what would happen there. 
If he took his girls back with him, a panic would 
certainly follow. So he left those daughters of 
his, dearer than life to him, as hostages of peace 
and security. With two soldiers he went back 
and was in Harpoot on duty that night. A 
week later those girls came home under the 
escort of the brave Armenian pastor, whose 
courage had done much to stay the massacre 
until Mr. Knapp arrived. Who can tell the 
courage it took to leave those girls behind? 

"All this was in the day's work to him. He 
was as modest as he was brave. Only by re- 
peated cross-examination could one extract his 
story. He absolutely refused to be regarded as 
a hero, but he was one of the noblest. 

" His ideals of duty never took himself into 
account. If he had so willed his great linguistic 
ability and his business enterprise might have 



GEEATER LOVE HATH NO MAN 123 

won him fame and fortune in the Near East. 
Nothing could tempt him from his service to 
his Master and his brother, the Armenian." 

Mr. Knapp's efforts at Harpoot were not con- 
fined to the orphanages. He taught classes in 
the college and theological seminary, he toured 
the villages, he was station treasurer; indeed, 
he had too many kinds of work to do — the usual 
experience of missionaries in undermanned sta- 
tions — and yet he was always reaching out to 
grasp new opportunities, try new experiments. 
A big farm on which the orphan boys in his 
charge should learn efficient Western methods 
of cultivating the soil was a project dear to his 
heart which he was forced to abandon. 

With it all he never ceased to study, to per- 
fect himself in the languages of the country, 
and a knowledge of the history, the customs, 
the prejudices of its people. He was always 
very patient with the Armenians, considerate, 
making allowances for their ignorance and the 
deteriorating effect of centuries of oppression 
on their character. He was not always patient 
or tactful with his associates, a little quick to 
criticize, somewhat hasty and impulsive in action 
and judgments. 



124 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

But there never was a man more quick to 
acknowledge a mistake or fault, more eager to 
make reparation or apology; his humility was 
very great and very sincere. 

In 1909 he came to America on furlough in 
time to be with his mother during the last 
month of her life. He returned to Turkey the 
following year, going to Bitlis, which greatly 
needed another missionary. His wife remained 
in America for the sake of their children, ex- 
pecting to join him within a year, but was de- 
tained by circumstances. In 1914 she had en- 
gaged passage on a steamer to return to Turkey 
when the outbreak of the war caused all sail- 
ings to be cancelled by the Board. 

During the awful events of June and July, 
1915, in Bitlis, Mr. Knapp was tireless in his 
efforts to relieve suffering, and to mediate with 
the Turkish officials in behalf of his people. 
He had been ** much respected by and accept- 
able to the Turks in a business and social way " 
during the whole of his missionary life, in spite 
of the 1896 experience, but now all was changed. 
The Turks were anxious to get rid of all in- 
convenient witnesses of what they had done to 
the Armenians. The story of their attempt to 



GEEATER LOVE HATH NO MAN 126 

deport all the Americans from Bitlis has been 
told in the eleventh chapter, together with the 
incident of the shot fired by the disguised 
Armenian, which was the pretext seized upon 
by the officials for sending off Mr. Knapp with- 
out delay. 

He was allowed to take with him an Armenian 
boy and a Turkish servant. The latter returned 
from Sert. 

" We waited in vain for a telegram from 
Diarbekir," wrote Miss McLaren. " The serv- 
ant told us that Mr. Knapp planned to go to 
Harpoot as soon as he could get a conveyance. 
It was not until some time had passed that the 
doctor (Mustifa Bey) came and told us that it 
was reported that Mr. Knapp was ill in Diar- 
bekir. This was only to prepare us for the 
worst, for in a moment or two he said that it 
was reported that Mr. Knapp had died of 
typhus. From his manner and the way he told 
the story, I judged that he felt that Mr. Knapp's 
death had not been a natural one. No very 
satisfactory reply to inquiries was ever received 
from the government. A doctor who claimed 
to have attended him gave a detailed account of 
the run of the fever and the pulse evidently 



126 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

made up entirely by a man who knew little or 
nothing of typhus fever," 

The Armenian boy was sent from Diarbekir 
to Harpoot at Consul Davis's demand but could 
give no information concerning the cause of Mr. 
Knapp's death. After investigation, both Dr. 
Atkinson of Harpoot and the American consul 
arrived at the conviction that it was not a 
natural one. The truth will probably never be 
known, but that he died the death of a martyr 
is practically certain. Dr. Andrus, Dr. Thorn 
and Miss Fenenga, later deported from Mardin, 
were shown his grave by a soldier who claimed 
to be one of those who had borne him to his 
last resting place. It is a lonely and unmarked 
grave, but a cenotaph has been placed in the 
cemetery at Forest Hills, Boston, by his cousin, 
Mr. George B. Knapp, whose fatherly affection 
and interest followed him throughout his whole 
career. His life ended in the city where the 
missionary life of his parents began, but the 
manner of its end has made his memory not 
only especially dear and sacred to hundreds of 
survivors of the martyr race he loved and 
worked for but a vital influence in their lives. 
These lives will be his best eulogy. 



XV 

MISS McLaren falls ill; GERMAN 
OFFICERS VISIT BITLIS 



T^ 



HE girls and women who were per- 
■ mitted to remain in Bitlis on condition 
that they assist in the hospital, began 
to do washing, sewing and cooking for the sol- 
diers, but in their own schoolhouse and under 
Miss Shane's supervision. The pastor's wife 
was very helpful in overseeing this work. 

After Mr. Knapp was sent away it was re- 
ported that Miss Shane must go as soon as she 
was strong enough to travel. For several 
weeks her trunk was packed in readiness to 
leave at a moment's notice. One day the mili- 
tary commandant came to see Miss McLaren 
in company with Mustifa Bey; Miss Shane 
happened to step into the room and the com- 
mandant demanded the reason for her still be- 
ing in Bitlis. Mustifa Bey said that she was 
still having fever and was not able to travel. 

This was true : she had overtaxed her strength 

127 



128 THE TRAGEDY OP BITLIS 

after her illness and her temperature had gone 
up to 102 and stayed there for several days. 
The explanation was accepted and the matter 
allowed to drop. 

During the weeks when she thought she 
would have to leave, Miss Shane decided to 
ask the Vali if she might take some of her girls 
with her. She talked the matter over with the 
women and it was known that the pastor's 
daughter was one for whom she would make a 
special plea. But the girl herself came to Miss 
Shane's room with this request: 

" Miss Shane, I hear that you are going to 
ask the Governor for permission to take me with 
you. If that is true, please do not, please ask 
him if you can take my mother. They think 
she has money and it is more dangerous for her 
to stay than for me." 

The mother, a woman of great beauty of 
character, died August 27th of typhus. 

Deegeen Heghene, Kevork Efifendi's widow, 
had acted as Miss Shane's nurse during part of 
her illness, at the same time taking almost the 
entire responsibility for the care of the girls. 
Later she became her most valuable helper in 
the care of the orphans and of the household. 



MISS MoLAEEN FALLS ILL 129 

and often acted as her interpreter. Her quiet 
demeanour won the respect of all the Turks 
with whom they had to deal. 

Not long after her husband's martyrdom her 
baby died. This was the only occasion on which 
she seemed to be unable to control her grief. 
It was heart-breaking to see her chnging to the 
dead child, kissing its cold face and calling its 
name. It was thought best she should not at- 
tend the burial service but her piteous cries 
followed the little coffin as it was carried out of 
her sight. 

It seemed to Miss McLaren that her chief 
business that summer was burying the dead or 
seeing that it was done, preparing the bodies 
herself, often, because people were afraid of con- 
tracting typhus. After Sister Martha's death 
she resumed her work in the Turkish hospitals, 
of which there were ten or twelve in the neigh- 
bourhood which had to be visited every day. 

In September she herself fell ill with typhus, 
was attended by a Syrian doctor on the hospital 
staff and nursed by Miss Shane and two Arme- 
nian girls. 

The bankers who had fled from the city when 
the Turks evacuated it on the approach of the 



130 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

Russians, a few days after their return called on 
the two ladies and told them that they would 
never forget the horror of what they had seen 
on the road. The Bitlis River, a shallow moun- 
tain stream, was filled, and the banks covered, 
with bodies in all stages of decomposition; 
bodies were lying on both sides of the road and 
sometimes the highway itself was obstructed 
by heaps of the dead. In one place, for the 
space of about two rods, the road was covered 
with corpses over which Turks would force 
their horses to go. 

What had impressed them most was the sight 
of children alive and alone among the dead, 
wailing piteously for the help and comfort that 
could not come, or sitting quietly, too young to 
realize the horror of what had happened. 

A few days before the bankers themselves 
had left the city a company of one thousand 
Armenian soldiers had been sent from Bitlis 
entrusted with government books and papers. 
They had been set upon and killed and their 
bodies left where they had fallen. The govern- 
ment archives were scattered all over the hillside. 

Hundreds of the fleeing Moslem ci\ Hans died 
from illness and exposure. The Vali on one 



MISS McLAEEN FALLS ILL 131 

occasion said to Miss McLaren : "All this suffer- 
ing through sickness and war has come upon the 
Moslems as a just punishment from a righteous 
God, because of what we have done to the 
Armenians. Some of them deserved punish- 
ment but we went too far, and now God is 
punishing us for it." This conviction did not 
make him put an end to the atrocious treatment 
of women, however. 

In the latter part of September he was re- 
placed by a man who was proud of the fact that 
he had cleaned out the Christian population of 
Erzingan — a brother-in-law of Djevdet Bey. 

In October two German officers on their way 
to Persia stopped at Bitlis with instructions to 
learn what had become of Sister Martha, as the 
German Embassy was unable to get any satis- 
factory answer to its telegrams. To these men 
were entrusted letters to her friends giving an 
account of her experiences in Bitlis, her last 
days and her dying messages, and these were 
safely delivered. 

None of the Americans' letters were leaving 
the Bitlis post-office and their telegrams were 
changed and curtailed so that they often failed 
to convey the intended message. Therefore 



132 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

Miss Shane asked the senior officer if he would 
get a letter to the American Embassy. He re- 
plied that he would send it to the German Em- 
bassy asking to have it passed on to the Amer- 
ican. She thereupon wrote a fairly detailed 
account of the events of the few days preceding 
Mr. Knapp's deportation, and this letter also 
reached its destination. 

These officers listened with interest to the 
story of what had taken place in Bitlis. They 
sent food to the women kept in prison in a 
starving condition, and later they gathered up 
children and brought them to the American 
ladies. Because of their evident sympathy for 
the Armenians they incurred the suspicion of 
the government and were constantly shadowed 
by spies. 



XVI 

MUSTIFA BEY AND THE SCHOOLGIRLS 

AFTER the departure of the two young 
Armenian surgeons whose fate is de- 
scribed in the seventh chapter the hos- 
pitals had been left without a surgeon and this 
had caused a great deal of suffering. At last 
another doctor had said that he would do the 
best he could if Sister Martha would help him. 
She really knew more than he did and he would 
ask her how to make an incision and would fol- 
low her directions. After that he was obliged 
to perform all the operations, and unlike most 
Turkish doctors he did his best and improved 
noticeably. Later he was promoted to be 
superintendent of the hospitals. 

This was Mustifa Bey, who saved the women 
and girls in the school by representing that he 
needed their assistance in the hospital. He was 
an Arab, had been educated in France and Ger- 
many, and said to the Americans on one occa- 
sion that he was ashamed of being an Ottoman 

133 



134 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

subject, was horrified by the massacres, and 
that if ever he had the opportunity he would 
give himself up to the Russians. 

The responsibility he assumed was not a 
light one. As he saw a great deal of the other 
officials he knew that the presence of the girls 
in the school was a constant thorn in the flesh 
to the government. The girls were better edu- 
cated than the majority of Armenian girls and 
many of them were very attractive ; the military 
officers stationed in the town constantly brought 
pressure to bear on the authorities to deport 
them in order that they might be able to take 
their pick of them. 

"At one time," wrote Miss Shane, " it really 
seemed as if they would have to go and Mustifa 
Bey seemed quite stirred up over the situation. 
He told me that the government was continu- 
ally finding fault with him because so many sol- 
diers in the hospital were dying, but it would 
not give him the material to work with nor the 
necessary help. He had been feeling rebellious 
for some time past, but when the Governor said 
the girls must be taken away he was aroused to 
the point of resistance. He told me that unless 
I feared that Miss McLaren and myself might 



MUSTIFA BEY AND THE SCHOOLGIRLS 135 

become involved in case the government at- 
tempted to take the girls, he would gather his 
hospital forces and resist. He had stood all he 
cared to stand from the government, had begged 
to be allowed to resign his position as hospital 
superintendent; had even remained in his house 
two days feigning illness to avoid responsibility 
under such circumstances, but he could not do 
this indefinitely and he might as well meet his 
fate defending his own rights. 

" I told him that as far as the government 
was concerned the girls had really been placed 
under his protection, and that if he opposed 
their being taken on the ground that he needed 
their assistance I hardly saw how we could be 
held responsible — the decision was his to make, 
and I would be more than willing to have him 
resist any attempt to take the girls when the 
matter came to a final issue. 

" Before he spoke to me he had written to 
Djevdet Bey to countermand the order for the 
taking of the girls. No answer had come and 
several days of uncertainty had passed. In the 
meantime the two German officers had arrived 
in the city and had called. I regretted not hav- 
ing appealed to them on the subject and wrote 



136 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

a letter to the senior officer explaining the situa- 
tion and asking him to use his influence with the 
Governor. He and his aide called again, said 
they were on their way to see the Vali and 
thought it best that I go with them that we 
might present the matter together. Miss Mc- 
Laren was just recovering from typhus at the 
time and could not go with us. 

" We found Djevdet Bey with the Governor 
and after some discussion the former gave his 
assurance that the girls would be allowed to 
remain as long as they were assisting in the 
hospitals. The Governor also gave his consent. 
Djevdet Bey later complained to Miss McLaren 
because Mustifa Bey had thought it necessary 
to get him mixed up in the affair by writing the 
letter, but on this occasion he did not seem 
averse to assuming responsibility for the de- 
cision. 

" We could never be certain that Djevdet Bey 
would not change his mind even if he sincerely 
meant what he said at this time and of this we 
could not be sure. He was in the city only 
occasionally and then for short periods of time 
and the Vali always kept us in a state of uncer- 
tainty. 



MUSTIPA BEY AND THE SCHOOLGIELS 137 

" Commander Khaleel Bey sent word from 
Moush that he needed more doctors and Bitlis 
must furnish its quota. Mustifa Bey appealed 
to higher authorities in Erzerum and was told 
not to send any as they were needed in BitHs. 
Khaleel Bey replied that if they were not sent 
his men would come and take them by force. 
The hospital building opposite us was prepared 
for the siege. The girls were in the school 
building and all doors and gates were barred. 
However, Khaleel Bey thought better of his 
decision to use force and we escaped being 
dangerously near a scene of battle. 

" Complaint was constantly being made that 
the girls were not doing enough to warrant 
their staying. Mustifa Bey said that he him- 
self was placed in a very embarrassing situation, 
that he was being made the butt of ridicule and 
censure for keeping the girls. Since he could 
not guarantee their ultimate safety he could not 
understand why I would not allow them to be- 
come the wives of officers who wanted them. I 
told him that our religion did not sanction this, 
that there was not a girl in the school who was 
not free to become the wife of a Turk if she 
chose to do so, but that I was staying in Bitlis 



138 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

>. 
for the very purpose of preventing their being 

forced into Turkish homes against their vi^ill. 

" That he did not attempt to make the 
situation easier for himself by forcing the girls 
to marry Turks is to his credit. Later, how- 
ever, he insisted on having seven girls as as- 
sistants in the operating room. Up to this time 
the girls had been working in the school build- 
ing under my supervision and I disliked the idea 
of their going out among the Turks. When I 
objected he became very angry, said it was 
necessary that their work should be more in 
evidence if they were to be allowed to stay; he 
needed their assistance; if I did not give my 
consent he would not employ them in the hos- 
pital longer, and the government could do what 
it pleased with them. 

" Later he seemed ashamed of his show of 
anger, said I could choose those who were to 
assist him, and assured me that they would be 
treated with respect and that I was free to visit 
the operating room often to see how they were 
getting along. I chose seven of the teachers, 
young women who had been brought up from 
their early years under the care of the Ely sis- 
ters, and said to them : 



MUSTIFA BEY AND THE SCHOOLGIRLS 139 

" ' The real test has now come for you. If 
you cannot make the Turk realize that there is 
a vital difference between your religion and his, 
your principles and his; that there is something 
in you which makes it impossible for you to 
descend to his plane of living and thinking, and 
that you do not shrink from death when the 
question of principle and loyalty to your re- 
ligion is at stake, your only means of protection 
is gone and any breaking down of barriers 
means danger for yourselves and all the others.' 

" The girls never had cause for complaint. 
Miss McLaren in her work in the hospital often 
had occasion to visit the operating room and 
she reported that they were faring well and 
were getting some valuable training. 

" Some of the women were sent out to the 
more distant hospitals to work. They were 
kindly and respectfully treated, with the excep- 
tion of a few who were sent to the monastery 
outside of the city which was used as a hospital 
for convalescents. These women were in con- 
stant danger until Mustifa Bey was prevailed 
upon to replace the superintendent of this work 
by a more trustworthy man." 



XVII 

MISS McLaren and miss shane 

OBLIGED TO LEAVE BITLIS 

THE two ladies could send out no letters 
and but few telegrams. In November 
the American ambassador at Constan- 
tinople urged them to leave. Three telegrams 
were sent in reply stating that they were re- 
maining voluntarily and did not wish to go, but 
he thought these telegrams not genuine, sent 
an order for them to go to Harpoot, and had the 
American consul in that city send his kavass to 
Bitlis to accompany them. 

Miss McLaren and Miss Shane left BitHs on 
November 30th. Women and children were 
still being hunted from house to house through- 
out the city and a few days earlier the two 
ladies had seen a number held under guard in 
the open without food or shelter, huddled to- 
gether in small groups. Their faces did not 
seem human, so emaciated were they with hun- 
ger and suffering. 

140 



OBLIGED TO LEAVE BITLIS 141 

The road to the south had been partially 
cleared up in October, just before some German 
officials were expected to pass that way, going 
to Mosul, but evidences of the summer's work 
were still to be seen; in every gully were the 
remains of human bodies. 

While the ladies were in Diarbekir a new 
massacre took place, and during the next two 
days they saw bodies lying on or near the road, 
some of them stripped of their clothing, many 
terribly mutilated; the faces of three in one 
group had been so mutilated that no features 
were discernible and the bodies were one mass 
of gashes. A dog was standing over one body ; 
as the travellers drew near they could see that 
he had already gnawed a part of the flesh from 
the bones. 

They passed the spot where the men had evi- 
dently been led ofiE the road. It was far from 
any village, a wild desolate hilly region, with 
enormous jagged rocks covering the hillsides. 
At this point some had evidently tried to escape 
the torture and death that awaited them in the 
ravines. They had been shot and left where 
they fell; many bodies were in plain view, of 
others an arm or a leg could be seen projecting 



142 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

from behind some rock. Further on was the 
body of an old white-haired woman lying near 
the road, a deep gash in her forehead. 

All along the way were seen villages com- 
pletely destroyed by fire. 

The travellers passed a group of at least fifty 
men who were marching along under guard, 
and were told that these, too, were soon to be 
killed. They were all that had been left of a 
very large party of Armenian soldiers who had 
come from Erzerum. Two of the Erzerum 
mission schoolboys had been with them but suc- 
ceeded in escaping and found refuge as helpers 
in the American hospital at Harpoot. 

Miss McLaren assisted in this hospital after 
her arrival in Harpoot, Miss Shane in the girls' 
school and among the Armenian refugees from 
further north. 

In the summer of 1917 after the breaking of 
diplomatic relations with the United States, 
they left with the Harpoot missionaries for 
America. Not until they reached Switzerland 
did they learn the truth about what had taken 
place in Van in the spring of 1915, and that 
there had been no " rebellion " there. 

They had known that the entire population 



OBLIGED TO LEAVE BITLIS 143 

of the town and province had fled into the 
Caucasus when the Russian army retreated in 
August, for Djevdet Bey had entered the 
evacuated city and later returned to BitHs. He 
told Miss McLaren that Mrs. Ussher had died 
of typhus in July and he had spoken with deep 
feeling of the kindness shown by the mission- 
aries towards the Moslem refugees whom they 
had cared for on their premises during the 
Russian occupation. 

" I can never forget it," said he. 



XVIII 
SEQUELS 

AGAIN the Russians entered Turkey, 
occupied Van and pushed westward, 
reaching Tadvan once more about the 
last of January, 1916. It took the army a month 
to cross the plain, eighteen miles in width, be- 
tween Tadvan and Bitlis. About midway a 
terrible battle was fought and the noise of it 
was heard in the city. 

Mustifa Bey, faithful to his trust, had refused 
to yield to the great pressure brought to bear 
on him to make him give up the schoolgirls left 
in his charge. A few, fearing a worse fate, had 
consented to become the wives of Turkish of- 
ficers, and two whom he had sent south, assur- 
ing them of safety in the home of his brother in 
Aleppo, were stopped at Diarbekir and obliged 
to work in the military hospital there. But up 
to this time he had succeeded in protecting the 

rest from molestation. 

144 



SEQUELS 145 

When the Russians drew near the city, how- 
ever, the Turks slaughtered in the most brutal 
manner — ^with axes instead of with bullets or 
bayonets — the few women who had not as yet 
been deported, and Djevdet sent word to Mustifa 
Bey that he must give up his charges to be put 
to death. Mustifa Bey in an effort to postpone 
the evil hour made illness an excuse for not 
obeying at once, saying he would attend to the 
matter on the morrow. He then went to the 
girls and bid them prepare for a long journey, 
as they were to be sent into exile at last. 

It may be supposed they had no thought of 
sleep that night as they busied themselves fol- 
lowing his instructions. About an hour after 
midnight they were startled by the sudden noise 
of battle in the city itself. The furious firing 
seemed to be almost under their very windows, 
as the schoolhouse stood near the edge of the 
bluff overlooking the most densely built-up part 
of the town. The girls believed that the regular 
troops were engaged with plundering hordes of 
Kurds, and when there came a thunderous 
knocking at their gate at five o'clock in the 
morning they thought that either a band of 
these Kurds had come to ravish and kill or that 



146 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

the Turkish soldiers were about to hurry them 
" down the road." 
" Open ! We are friends — ^Armenians." 
Trembling, they obeyed, to find outside a band 
of Armenian Volunteers, part of the advance 
guard of the Russian army, which, by sliding 
down the trackless, snow-covered hills sur- 
rounding Bitlis, had taken the Turks by sur- 
prise and captured the city. The Moslems who 
did not succeed in escaping were put to death, 
but Mustifa Bey*s life was spared through the 
intercession of the girls whom he had protected. 
A week later these girls were taken to Van, 
where some of them remained till the second 
evacuation of the province, while a few went on 
almost immediately to the Caucasus. 

Among the Armenian Volunteers who cap- 
tured Bitlis were two young men originally 
natives of Kultig, a large village not far from 
the city, which, like all the other villages of the 
vilayet, had sufifered from massacre and de- 
portation, but some weeks later than the rest. 
One of these young men, Caspar, by bribing a 
Turkish friend, managed to elude the soldiers 
surrounding his home, and after remaining con- 
cealed in the mountains for a while, succeeded 



SEQUELS 147 

in escaping to the Russian army, then very near 
the city. When it retreated he went with it to 
Russia, to return as a volunteer in 1916. 

The other young man, Levone, had emigrated 
to America some years before. After the war 
broke out he started for Russia with the inten- 
tion of fighting in the Russian army against the 
Turks. He sailed on the Lusitania and when 
that ship was sunk was saved by a piece of 
timber by means of which he kept himself afloat 
for hours until rescued. After which he carried 
out his original intention and was with the Rus- 
sian army which raised the siege of Van in May, 
1915. Not sent on to Bitlis at this time with 
the troops that never reached their objective, 
he entered his old home with a victorious army 
ten months later. 

These Kultig men married two of the rescued 
schoolgirls who were sisters. Levone Seferian, 
after a three months* stay in Van, brought his 
wife, Lucia, on to New York. The other young 
couple remained behind and no word has been 
received from them since. If living they are 
probably in the Russian Caucasus, where there 
are now 330,000 Armenian refugees. In August, 
1915, there were about 250,000 refugees from 



148 THE TRAGEDY OP BITLIS 

the evacuated Van province and about 100,000 
from the Erzerum and Bitlis provinces and their 
condition — homeless, starving, strangers in a 
strange land — was desperate indeed. 

The Russian Government gave a bread ration 
for a while, but it was the American Committee 
for Armenian and Syrian Relief that organized 
permanent and really efficient relief in this con- 
gested district. It sent there Mr. Richard Hill, 
late in 1915, and soon after Dr. Samuel Wilson 
from Persia; both were American missionaries. 
Dr. F. W. MacCallum of the Constantinople 
Mission and Mr. George F. Gracey of Ourfa 
went there early in 1916 and were joined some 
months later by Dr. George C. Raynolds and 
Rev. and Mrs. Ernest A. Yarrow, formerly of 
the Van Mission, and Rev. and Mrs. Harrison 
A. Maynard, who had left Bitlis for their fur- 
lough in May, 1915. 

Mr. and Mrs. Maynard found in the Caucasus 
the women and girls who had so strangely sur- 
vived the tragedy of Bitlis. Deegeen Heghene 
became matron of an orphanage. Pastor Kha- 
chig's daughter and her little brother were 
taken into another orphanage. The little tot 
who was rescued from deportation and inevi- 





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InDUSTKI.M. KkI.IKK of the AmKKUA.N CuMMITTEli FOR 

1\.f:lief in the Near East. 



SEQUELS 149 

table death by a Turk but would have none of 
him and was consigned to the care of an Arme- 
nian woman (see p. 66) was among those who 
were saved. 

The Americans immediately began to organ- 
ize industrial relief. Crude wool and cotton 
were bought and cleansed, carded, spun, woven 
and made into garments and blankets by 
refugees, for refugees. Refugees made spinning- 
wheels, handlooms, sandals and, later, farm im- 
plements. Every dollar of relief money was 
thus made to do the work of two. Every in- 
dividual employed supported a family averag- 
ing five or six members. The aged, infirm and 
helpless were given money and needy widows 
with children to support were given a small 
sum monthly for each child. Children were 
taught trades ; a small hospital was opened and 
a daily clinic held by Dr. Kennedy, who had 
been sent out by the Lord Mayor of London's 
Committee for Armenian ReHef. Another Eng- 
lishman who worked with the American Com- 
mittee most efficiently was Mr. Thomas Dann 
Heald of Bristol, while Mr. Backhouse and Mr. 
Catchpool of the Lord Mayor's Committee co- 
operated with it in friendly and effective fash- 



160 THE TEAGEDY OF BITUS 

ion. In 1917 Messrs. Compton, Elmer, Par- 
tridge, James, White, Williams, Mrs. White, 
Mrs. Compton and Miss Orvis were sent from 
America to assist in the work which had reached 
proportions beyond the strength of those who 
had originally organized it. Had not their 
Armenian superintendents been men trained in 
the mission work of Van — educated, capable, 
trustworthy men, filled with the spirit of service 
and cooperation, the task of the Americans 
would have been an almost impossible one. 

Russia's separate peace with Germany spelled 
catastrophe to the relief work. The American 
consul at Tiflis, Mr. F. Willoughby-Smith, sent 
the American workers away. Wrote Mr. Yar- 
row later: 

"The following argument put forth by the 
consul, I think appealed to us all and it was on 
this ground that we decided to leave. It seemed 
most likely that the Germans had designs on the 
Caucasus and if they sent even a small force 
from Odessa there was nothing to oppose them. 
Then our being with the Armenians would do 
them more damage than good. We would im- 
mediately be interned, our equipment con- 
fiscated and probably the activity of the Com- 



SEQUELS 151 

mittee be entirely stopped. On the other hand, 
if we should withdraw and leave the work of 
the Committee in the hands of local Armenian 
committees the Germans might allow them to 
continue. And the consul assured us that he 
could arrange for the transfer of funds through 
the Swedish consul or some other neutral 
agency. I think it was harder for us to come 
away than it would have been to stay, but we 
tried to weigh the question calmly and logically 
and I still believe we decided wisely. The 
situation was entirely different from the one we 
faced in Van three years before.* We were 
warned then of what was to happen and with 
our eyes open we decided to stay and share the 
fate of the people with whom we had lived and 
worked for so many years, but now our position 
was entirely different. We were in a land for- 
eign to ourselves and to the refugees to whom 
we were ministering. We had given them all 
our strength and intelligence, but new condi- 
tions over which we had no control made it im- 
possible to help further; on the contrary, our 
presence with them might be a real element of 
danger to their security, and with heavy hearts 
*^ee Dr. Ussher*s "An American Physician in Turkey." 



152 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

but free consciences we left the work to 
which we had been giving the best that was in 
us." 

The party left Erivan March 19th. The 
chance of getting anywhere with a whole skin 
seemed very uncertain; the train was searched 
at every stop by the Tartars ; the stations were 
almost all destroyed and villages were burning 
all along the way. 

Mr. James ArroU and Mr. John Elder, two 
young Americans, had been doing Y. M. C. A. 
work among the soldiers in the Caucasus for a 
short time. They secured consent from the 
district secretary to remain a while at least. 
Mr. Heald remained for a few days in Erivan to 
complete the transfer of the work to the Arme- 
nian Committees aided by Mr. McDowell of the 
Persian Branch of the Relief, then in British 
service, and Mr. Gracey who had become a cap- 
tain in the British army. Mr. Heald left Tiflis 
on the last train allowed to pass by the Tartars, 
Mr. McDowell was ordered to Alexandropol 
and Captain Gracey to Tiflis. (He was after- 
wards made prisoner by the Bolshevists and 
not set free till late in the spring of 1919.) One 
of the two Y. M. C. A. men became very ill. 



SEQUELS 163 

the other cared for him; on his recovery they 
divided the reUef work between them. 

So the industrial rehef at Erivan was never 
discontinued, the orphanages and hospital never 
closed, throughout all the changes that took 
place in that harassed region during the next 
few months, though, at one time, informed by 
the Armenian Dictator, Aram Pasha, that 
Erivan would be in Turkish hands before many 
days, Mr. Arroll and Mr. Elder prepared to 
leave. But the tide of battle at Sadar Abad 
turned and Erivan was saved. 

Consul Willoughby-Smith left the relief work 
in Tiflis in charge of Madame Plavsky, a Rus- 
sian lady, and her assistant, Mr. Booman, who 
was a Lett. Mr. Montesanto, vice-consul at 
Vladikavkaz, cared for the refugees fleeing from 
the Caucasus into Russia, of whom over fifty 
thousand passed through this opening in the 
great mountain barrier between the two conti- 
nents : food and medical assistance was given to 
thousands, milk to the children and the sick. 

When the armistice was signed Mr. Maynard 
at once dropped the relief work in Persia in 
which he had engaged not long after leaving 
the Caucasus, and hastened back to Erivan. 



164 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

Mr. Yarrow left Army Y. M. C. A. work in 
Vladivostok and travelled thither via India and 
Egypt. The American Committee for Arme- 
nian and Syrian Relief in the meantime planned 
a great work of relief and reconstruction in the 
Near East — where, by the way, it is entitled the 
American Committee for Relief in the Near 
East, or the A. C. R. N. E. It sent out early 
in January, 1919, a Relief Commission of seven, 
headed by Dr. James L. Barton, to investigate 
conditions and organize relief. President Main 
of Grinnell College was the Relief Commissioner 
for the Caucasus. He cabled to New York 
early in April : 

" I have been handling refugee concentra- 
tion along the former boundary line between 
Russian and Turkish Armenia. Alexandropol, 
a large center, and Etchmiadzin, a small one, 
are typical. In the one are 68,000 refugees by 
actual census at our bread and soup kitchens. 
In the other are 7,000. Refugees have streamed 
into these places hoping to find it possible to 
cross the border into their former homes in 
Turkish Armenia near Kars. Concentration at 
these two places and many others without food 
or clothing and after a winter of exile in the 



SEQUELS 156 

Caucasus and beyond has produced a condition 
of horror unparalleled among the atrocities of 
the great war. On the streets of Alexandropol 
on the day of my arrival 192 corpses were 
picked up. This is far below the average per 
day. One-seventh of the refugees are dying 
each month. . . . 

" The refugees dare not go forward. They 
halt on the borderland of their home. The 
Turks, the Kurds and the Tartars have taken 
possession of their land and will hold it by force 
of arms. A line almost Hke a battle line from 
the Black Sea region, where is located the 
Southwestern Republic with Kars as its capital, 
to the Caspian Sea, where Baku is the capital 
of the Azerbeijan Republic, together with a Hne 
of Turks, Kurds and Tartars between these two 
extremes, holds the refugees where they are. 
The total number is more than 330,000. To 
these must be added the local inhabitants also 
suflFering indescribable hardships. The world 
appears to be unconscious of the overwhelming 
human tragedy that is being enacted in the 
Caucasus. The Turk and his racial confed- 
erates are carrying forward with growing ef- 
ficiency the policy of extermination developed 



156 THE TRAGEDY OF BITLIS 

during the war by the method of starvation. 
Starvation is aided by typhus, and already, as 
if in anticipation of the hot season, cholera is 
developing. . . ."* 

Later in January forty relief workers, all men, 
sailed on the Pensacola, which carried a cargo of 
food, clothing, medical supplies, hospital units, 
ambulances, etc., for the sufferers in the Near 
East. Among the workers was Dr. Ussher of 
the Van Mission, and on their arrival in Con- 
stantinople he was sent with several new men 
up into the Caucasus. 

The Caesar y the MercuriuSy the Western Belle 
and the Newport News have in quick succession 
carried out supplies of food, clothing and every- 
thing needed for reUef and rehabilitation. On 

* Cables sent from the Caucasus June 1st and 7th state: 
" First relief and food ships momentarily checking tide 
starvation and death. Increased and continuous aid im- 
perative. Repatriation into Turkish Armenia beginning." 
" Conservative estimates British and our Committee read 
amount immediately needed Caucasus $1,500,000 monthly. 
Committee only relief. Situation worse daily." " History 
has no record of human suffering on such a scale." 

Mr. Hoover has cooperated with the Committee in 
every possible way but his organization is scheduled to 
go out of existence July 1, 1919. Mr. Yarrow has been 
appointed Deputy Commissioner for the Caucasus with 
oversight of Erzerum, Van and Bitlis when these are 
opened up. 



SEQUELS 157 

the Leviathan sailed in February about two hun- 
dred and fifty more relief workers — doctors, 
nurses, expert agriculturists and mechanics, 
sanitary engineers and civil engineers, with 
other technically trained men and women, 
teachers and orphanage workers, and smaller 
groups have followed these from time to time/ 
Miss Shane went out on the Leviathan. Miss 
McLaren also intends to return to Turkey when 
she has completed the nurses' training course 
she entered upon soon after her return to this 
country. 

This is the program of the American Com- 
mittee for Armenian and Syrian Relief: first, to 
save the lives of the thousands upon thousands 
of the victims of Turkish cruelty who are now 
starving to death; next, to repatriate the de- 
ported exiles (as well as the exiles in the Cau- 
casus who were not deported, but fled from 
their homes) who since the armistice was signed 
have been striving to return to their homes from 
the desert where they have been wandering for 
three years; to help them rebuild their houses, 

'J. Herbert Knapp, brother of George Knapp, went 
out as a civil engineer with a group of relief workers 
that sailed June 24, 1919. 



158 THE TEAGEDY OF BITLIS 

many of which have been destroyed; to supply 
peasants with seed and farm implements so that 
they may gain their own living from the soil 
and avert famine from the whole country; to 
supply artisans with the few tools and the small 
sum of money which would in a very short time 
enable them to support their families; to create 
industries by which the thousands of women 
left without male relatives may support them- 
selves; most important of all, to care for the 
children, most of them orphans, so efficiently, so 
wisely, that they may become a great asset in 
the economic, intellectual, social and spiritual 
development of the country. The reconstruc- 
tion of Turkey, the " key to the Old World," is 
in the hands of American philanthropy. 

Here is one example of the problems the 
A. C. R. N. E. has to solve: "The present 
movement by which the Turks are releasing 
women and children who have been sequestered 
in their homes is almost startling in its sweep 
across the country, putting upon us enormous 
responsibilities. There is no other organization 
in the country to meet this situation. While 
native communities are doing everything in 
their power to take in these discharged people 



SEQUELS 159 

and give them a home, they find it impossible 
to do anywhere near what is necessary to do, 
and all parties turn to us. It is pathetic to see 
the way in which all classes of people look upon 
this Commission as almost sent from heaven to 
save this stricken land from ruin." 

From the one town of Aintab 30,000 were 
driven out into the desert to die, and now there 
are, so far as can be ascertained, only 4,000 or 
5,000 alive. Whether this proportion holds 
true for the rest of Turkey we cannot tell. 
Undoubtedly more of the former inhabitants of 
Van are still living than of any other Armenian 
city. And of Bitlis, alas! the fewest. In the 
fall of 1915 the government of that city had 
issued a proclamation that all men who were in 
hiding could come out, would be forgiven ( ! ) 
and set to work. Some did come out of their 
holes looking like skeletons risen from the 
grave. What their ultimate fate was Miss Mc- 
Laren and Miss Shane do not know and aside 
from these they know of but one or two who 
escaped massacre. 

Although few survivors may return to Bitlis, 
it is of the utmost importance that the town 
should be fully rehabilitated. It has been said 



160 THE TEAGEDY OP BITLIS 

that it IS the " door between highlands and low- 
lands," the avenue of communication between 
the northern and northeastern plateaus and the 
Mesopotamian plains, between Persia and the 
coast of the Mediterranean. The strategical 
value of its position is therefore immense from 
the economic point of view; from the spiritual 
point of view no less great, for from this center 
the Kurds of Eastern Turkey can be most 
readily reached, civilized, Christianized, and for 
the sake of the future of Turkey this must be 
done. 

The tragedy of BitHs was one of the crudest 
of the war. May the future of the little town 
be a future of such peace, prosperity, far-reach- 
ing, civilizing influence and steady growth in 
righteousness as to compensate in some meas- 
ure for the hideous suffering of the past. 



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